
Class, 
Book. 



THE SECRET OF POWER 



The s ec ret 

OF POWER 

AND OTHER SERMONS bv 

i 

Alexander Maclaren d.d. 




FUNK & WAGNAI,LS COMPANY 

NEW YORK 
I905 



J5X&^ 



In Exchange 

raity 
MAY 7- 1934 



CO / 






CONTENTS 



SERMON I 

/ PAGE 

*THE SECRET OF POWER I 



SERMON II 

THE PATTERN OF SERVICE 26 

3? 

SERMON III 

THE AWAKING OF ZION 58 

SERMON IV 

"TIME FOR THEE TO WORK*' 8 1 

SERMON V 

THE EXHORTATION OF BARNABAS IOJ 

SERMON VI 
MEASURELESS POWER AND ENDLESS GLORY . . . 130 



vi CONTENTS 



SERMON VII 

PAG^ 

love's triumph 145 



SERMON VIII 

THE GRAVE OF THE DEAD JOHN AND THE GRAVE OF 

THE LIVING JESUS . . I $g 

SERMON IX 

THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH AND THE ASCENSION OF 

CHRIST 174 

SERMON X 

CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW? . . . . 1 87 

SERMON XI 

THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST IN HIS TEMPTATIONS . 201 

SERMON XII 

THE WELLS OF SALVATION . . . . . .212 

SERMON XIII 

SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD 222 



CONTENTS vii 



SERMON XIV 

PAGE 

CITIZENS OF HEAVEN 237 

SERMON XV 

MOSES AND HOBAB 25 1 

SERMON XVI 

THE OBSCURE APOSTLES 265 

SERMON XVII 
THE SOUL'S PERFECTION 280 

SERMON XVIII 

THE FIRST PREACHING AT ANTIOCH . . . 294 

SERMON XIX 

THE MASTER AND HIS SLAVES 304 

SERMON XX 
A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS . 3I3 



SERMON I* 

THE SECRET OF POWER, 

St. Matthew xviL 19, 20* 

Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not 
we cast him oat? And Jesus said onto them, Because of your 
tabeliet 

* A ND when He had called unto Him His twelve dis- 
^^ ciples, He gave them power against unclean spirits 
to cast them out" That same power was bestowed, too, on 
the wider circle of the seventy who returned again with 
joy, saying, " Lord, even the devils are subject unto us 
through Thy name." The ground of it Was laid in the 
solemn words with which Christ met their wonder at 
their own strength, and told how He " beheld Satan as 
lightning fall from heaven." Therefore had they 
triumphed, showing the fruits of their Master's victory j 
and therefore had He a right to renew the gift, in the 
still more comprehensive promise, " I give unto you 
power — over all the power of the enemy." 

What a commentary on such words this story affords ! 
What has become of their supernatural might ? Has it 

• Preached before the Directors and Friends of tke London 
Missionary Society* 

s 



2 THE SECRET OF POWER. [serm 

ebbed away as suddenly as it flowed ? Is their Lords 
endowment a shadow — His assurances delusion ? Has He 
taken back what He gave? Not so. And yet His 
servants are ignominiously beaten. One poor devil- 
ridden boy brings all their resources to nothing. He 
stands before them writhing in the gripe of his tormentor, 
but they cannot set him free. The importunity of the 
father's prayers is vain, and the tension of expectancy in 
his eager face relaxes into the old hopeless languor as he 
slowly droops to the conviction that they could not cast 
him out The malicious scorn in the eyes of the Scribes, 
those hostile critics who "knew that it would be so," 
helps to produce the failure which they anticipated. The 
curious crowd buzz about them — and in the noMst of it 
all the little knot of baffled disciples, possessors of power 
which seems to leave them when they need it most, with 
the unavailing spells dying half spoken on their lips, and 
their faint hearts longing that their Master would come 
down from the mount, and cover their weakness with His 
own great strength. 

No wonder that, as soon as Christ and they are 
alone, they want to know how their mortifying defeat 
has come about And they get an answer which 
they little expected, for the last place where men 
look for the explanation of their failures is within; 
and they will ascend into the heavens, and descend into 
the deeps for remote and recondite reasons, before they 
listen to the voice which says, " The fault is nigh thee — 
in thy heart" Christ's reply distinctly implies that the 
cause of their impotence lay wholly in themselves, not in 



l] THE SECRET OF POWER. % 

■ i n — — — mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmM—m^mmmmmmm^mmm—mmmmmmm^mm—m 

any defect or withdrawal of power, but solely in that In 
them which grasped the power. They little expected, too, 
to be told that they had failed because they had not been 
sure they would succeed. They had thought they believed 
in their ability to cast out the demon. They had tried 
with some kind of anticipation that they could. They 
had been surprised when they found they could not 
They had wonderingly asked why. And now Christ tells 
them that all along they had had no real faith in Him 
and in the reality of His gift. So subtly may unbelief 
steal into the heart, even while we fancy that we are 
working in faith. And a further portion of our Lord's 
reply points them to the great means by which this 
conquering faith can be maintained — namely, prayer and 
fasting. If, then, we put all these things together, we 
get a series of considerations, very simple and common- 
place indeed, but all the better and truer therefore, which 
I venture to submit to you, as having a very important 
bearing on all our Christian work, and especially on the 
missionary work of the Church. The principles which the 
text suggests touch the perpetual possession of the power 
which conquers ; the condition of its victorious exercise by 
us, as being our faith ; the subtle danger of unsuspected 
unbelief to which we are exposed ; and the great means 
of preserving our faith pure and strong. I ask your 
attention to a few considerations on these points in their 
order. 

But first, let me say very briefly, that I would not be 
understood as, by the selection of such a text, desiring to 
suggest that we have failed in our work. Thank God I 

» t 



4 THE SECRET OF POWER. ["** 

we can point to results far, far greater than we have 
deserved, far greater than we have expected, however 
they may be beneath oar desires, and still further below 
what the gospel was meant to accomplish. It may suit 
observers who have never done anything themselves, and 
have not particularly clear eyes for appreciating spiritual 
work, to talk of Christian missions as failures; but it 
would ill become us to assent to the lie. Failures 
indeed 1 with half a million of converts, with new forms 
of Christian life budding in all the wilderness of the 
peoples, with the consciousness of coming doom creep- 
ing about the heart of every system of idolatry I Is the 
green life in the hedges and in the sweet pastures starred 
with rathe primroses, and in the hidden copses blue with 
hyacinths a failure, because the east wind bites shrewdly, 
and " the tender ash delays to clothe herself with green " ? 
Not no we have net failed. Enough has been done to 
vindicate the enterprise, more than enough to fill our 
lips with thanksgiving, enough to entitle us to say to 
all would-be critics — Do you the same with your enchant- 
ments. But, on the other hand, we have to confess 
that the success has been slow and small, chequered and 
interrupted, that often we have been foiled, that we have 
confronted many a demon whom we could not cast out, 
and that at home and abroad the masses of evil seem to 
close in around us, and we make but little impression 
on their serried ranks. We have had success enough to 
assure us that we possess the treasure, and failures 
enough to make us feel how weak are the earthen vessels 
which hold it 



L] THE SECRET OF POWER. $ 

And now let us turn to the principles which flow from 
this text 

L We have an unvarying power. 

No doubt the explanation of their defeat which most 
naturally suggested itself to these disciples would be that 
somehow or other — perhaps because of Christ's absence 
—they had lost the gift which they knew they once had. 
And the same way of accounting for later want of success 
lingers among Christian people still You will sometimes 
hear it said : — " God sends forth His Spirit in special ful- 
ness at special times, according to His own sovereign 
will ; and till then we can only wait and pray." Or 
14 The miraculous powers which dwelt in the early Church 
have been withdrawn, and therefore the progress is slow." 
The strong imaginative tendency to make an ideal perfect 
in the past leads us to think of the primitive age of the 
Church as golden, in opposition to the plain facts of the 
case. We fancy that because apostles were its teachers, 
and the Cross within its memory, the infant society was 
stronger, wiser, better than any age since, and had gifts 
which we have lost What had it which we do not 
jpossess? The power of working miracles. What have 
jwe which it did not possess ? A completed Bible, and 
fee experience of eighteen centuries to teach us to under- 
stand it, and to confirm by facts our confidence that 
Christ's gospel is for all time and every land What 
have we in common with it? The same mission to fulfil, 
the same wants in our brethren to meet, the same gospel, 
the same spirit, the same immortal Lord All that any 



6 THE SECRET OF POWER. [SKRML 

age has possessed to fit it for the task of witnessing for 
Christ we too possess. The Church has in it a power 
which is ever adequate to the conquest of the world; and 
that power is constant through all time, whether we con- 
sider it as recorded in an unvarying gospel, or as energized 
by an abiding spirit, or as flowing from and centred in an 
unchangeable Lord. 

We have a gospel which never can grow old. Its adap- 
tation to the deepest needs of men's souls remains con- 
stant with these needs. These vary not from age to age. 
No matter what may be the superficial differences of dress 
the same human heart beats beneath every robe. The 
great primal wants of men's spirits abide as the great 
primal wants of their bodily life abide. Food and shelter 
for the one, — a loving, pardoning God, to know and love, 
for the other — else they perish. Wherever men go they 
carry with them a conscience which needs cleansing, a 
sense of separation from God joined with a dim know- 
ledge that union with Him is life, a will which is burdened 
with its own self-hood, an imagination which paints the 
misty walls of this earthly prison with awful shapes that 
terrify and faint hopes that mock, a heart that hungers 
for love, and a reason which pines in atrophy without 
light And all these the gospel which is lodged in our 
hands meets. It addresses itself to nothing in men that 
is not in Man. Surface differences of position, culture, 
clime, age, and the like, it brushes aside as unimportant 
and it goes straight to the universal wants. People tell 
us it has done its work, and much confident dogmatism 
proclaims that the world has outgrown it We have a 



L] THE SECRET OF POWER. 7 

right to be confident also, with a confidence born of our 
knowledge 9 that it has met and satisfied for us the want* 
which are ours and every man's, and to believe that as 
long as men live by bread, so long will this word which 
proceedeth out of the mouth of God be the food of their 
souls. Areopagus and Piccadilly, Benares and Oxford, 
need the same message and will find the same response 
to all their wants in the same word. 

Much of the institutions in which Christendom has 
embodied its conceptions of God's truth will crumble 
away. Many of the conceptions will have to be modi- 
fied, neglected truths will grow, to the dislocation ol 
much systematic theology, and the Word better under- 
stood will clear away many a portentous error with which 
the Church has darkened the word. Be it so. Let us 
be glad when " the things which can be shaken are re- 
moved," like mean huts built against the wall of some 
cathedral, masking and marring the completeness of its 
beauty; " that the things which cannot be shaken may 
remain,* and all the clustered shafts, and deep-arched 
recesses, and sweet tracery may stand forth freed from 
the excrescences which hid them. " The grass withereth, 
and the flower thereof falleth away. But the word of the 
Lord endureth for ever." 

We have an abiding Spirit, the Giver to us of a power 
without variableness or the shadow of turning, " I will 
pray the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, 
that He may abide with you for ever." The manner of 
His operations may vary, but the reality of His energy 
abides. The "works" of wonder which Jesus did oa 



8 THE SECRET OF POWER. [serm. 

earth may no more be done, but the greater works than 
these are still the sign of His presence, without whom no 
spiritual life is possible. Prophecies may fail, tongues 
may cease, but the more excellent gifts are poured out 
now as richly as ever. We are apt to look back to 
Pentecost and think that that marked a height to which 
the tide has never reached since, and therefore we are 
stranded amidst the ooze and mud. But the river which 
proceeds from the throne of God and of the Lamb is not 
like one of our streams on earth, that leaps to the light 
and dashes rejoicingly down the hillside, but creeps 
along sluggish in its level course, and dies away at last in 
the sands. It pours along the ages the same full volume 
with which it gushed forth at first Rather, the source 
goes with the Church in all ages, and we drink not of 
water that came forth long ago in the history of the 
world, and has reached us through the centuries, but of 
that which wells out fresh every moment from the Rock 
that follows us. The Giver of all power is with us. 

We have a Lord, the same yesterday, and to-day, and 
for ever. " Lo, I am with you always, even to the end 
of the world.* We have not merely to look back to the 
life and death of Christ in history, and recognise there 
the work, the efficacy of which shall endure for ever. 
But whilst we do this, we have also to think of the Christ 
" that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, 
who also maketh intercession for us." And the one 
thought, as the other, should strengthen our confidence 
in our possession of all the might that we need for bring- 
ing the world back to our Lord, 



l] the secret OF POWER. 9 

A work in the past which can never be exhausted or 
lose its power is the theme of our message. The mists of 
gathering ages wrap in slowly thickening folds of forgetful- 
ness all other men and events in history, and make them 
ghostlike and shadowy ; but no distance has yet dimmed 
or will ever dim that human form divine. Other names 
are like those stars that blaze out for a while, and then 
smoulder down into almost complete invisibility ; but He 
is the very Light itself, that burns and is not consumed. 
Other landmarks sink below the horizon as the tribes of 
men pursue their solemn march through the centuries, 
but the Cross on Calvary " shall stand for an ensign of 
the people, and to it shall the Gentiles seek." To pro- 
claim that accomplished salvation, once for all lodged in 
the heart of the world's history, and henceforth for ever 
yalid, is our unalterable duty. The message carries in 
itself its own immortal strength. 

A living Saviour in the present, who works with us, 
confirming the word with signs following, is the source of 
our power. Not till He is impotent shall we be weak. 
The immeasurable measure of the gift of Christ defines 
the degree, and the unending duration of His life who 
continueth for ever sets the period, of our possession of 
the grace which is given to every one of us. He is ever 
bestowing. He never withdraws what He once gives. 
The fountain sinks not a hair's breadth, though eighteen 
centuries have drawn from it Modern astronomy begins 
to believe that the sun itself by long expense of light will 
be shorn of its beams and wander darkling in space, 
circled no more by its daughter planets. But this Sun of 



10 THE SECRET OF POWER. [serm. 

our souls rays out for ever the energies of life and light 
and love, and after all communication possesses the in- 
finite fulness of them alL " His name shall be continued 
as long as the sun, all nations shall call Him blessed." 

Here then, brethren, are the perpetual elements of our 
constant power, an eternal Word, an abiding Spirit, an 
unchanging Lord 

IL The condition of exercising this power Is Faith* 

With such a force at our command — a force that could 
shake the mountains and break the rocks — how come we 
ever to fail ? So the disciples asked, and Christ's answer 
cuts to the very heart of the matter. Why could you not 
cast him out ? For one reason only, because you had 
lost your hold of My strength, and therefore had lost 
your confidence in your own derived power, or had 
forgotten that it was derived, and essayed to wield it as 
if it were your own. You did not trust Me, so you did not 
believe that you could cast him out ; or you believed that 
you could by your own might, therefore you failed. He 
throws them back decisively on themselves as solely 
responsible. Nowhere else, in heaven or in earth or 
hell, but only in us, does the reason lie for our break- 
down, if we have broken down. Not in God, who is ever 
with us, ready to make all grace abound in us, whose 
will is that all men should be saved and come to the 
knowledge of the truth; not in the gospel which we 
preach, for " it is the power of God unto salvation ; " not 
in the demon might which has overcome us, for " greater 
is He that is in us than he that is in the world" We are 



L] THE SECRET OF POWER. u 

driven from all other explanations to the bitterest and 
yet the most hopeful of all, that we only are to blame. 

And what in us is to blame ? Some of us will answer 
— Our modes of working; they have not been free 
enough, or not orderly enough, or in some way or other 
not wisely adapted to our ends. Some will answer — Our 
forms of presenting the truth ; they have not been flexible 
enough, or not fixed enough ; they have been too much a 
reproduction of the old ; they have been too licentious a 
departure from the old. Some will answer — Our eccle- 
siastical arrangements ; they have been too democratic ; 
they have been too priestly. Some will answer — Our 
intellectual culture ; it has been too great, obscuring the 
simplicity that is in Christ ; it has been too small, sending 
poorly furnished men into the field to fight with ordered 
systems of idolatry which rest upon a philosophical basis, 
and can only be overturned by undermining that It is 
no part of my present duty to discuss these varying answers. 
No doubt there is room for improvement in all the fields 
which they indicate. But does not the spirit of our Lord's 
words here beckon us away from these purely secondary 
subjects to fix our self-examination on the depth and 
strength of our faith, as incomparably the most important 
element in the conditions which determine our success or 
our failure? I do not undervalue the worth of wise 
methods of action, but the history of the Church tells us 
that pretty nearly any methods of action are fruitful in 
the right hands, and that without living faith the best of 
them become like the heavy armour which half-smothered 
a feeble man. I do not pretend to that sublime indif- 



I j THE SECRET OF POWER. [serm 



ferencc to dogma which is the modern form of supreme 
devotion to truth, but experience has taught us that 
wherever the name of Christ, as the Saviour of the world, 
has been lovingly proclaimed, there devils have been cast 
out, whatever private and sectional doctrines the exor- 
ciser has added to it I do not disparage organization, 
but courage is more than drill ; and there is such a thing 
as the veiy perfection of arrangement without life, like 
cabinets in a museum, where all the specimens are duly 
classified, and dead. I believe, with the old preacher, 
that if God can do without our learning, He needs our 
ignorance still less, but it is of comparatively little 
importance whether the draught of living water be brought 
to thirsty lips in an earthen cup or a golden vase, 

"TTie main thing is, does it hold good measure? 
Heaven soon sets right all other matters." 

And therefore, while leaving full scope for all im- 
provements in these subordinate conditions, let me urge 
upon you that the main thing which makes us strong for 
our Christian work is the grasp of living faith, which holds 
fast the strength of God. There is no need to plunge 
into the jungle of metaphysical theology here. Is it not 
a fact that the might with which the power of God has 
wrought for men's salvation has corresponded with the 
strength of the Church's desire and the purity of its trust 
in His power ? Is it not a truth plainly spoken in Scrip* 
ture and confirmed by experience, that we have the 
awful prerogative of limiting the Holy One of Israel, and 
quenching the Spirit ? Was there not a time in Christ's 



L] THE SECRET OF POWER. 13 

life on earth when He could do no mighty works because 
of their unbelief? We receive all spiritual gifts in 
proportion to our capacity, and the chief factor in settling 
the measure of our capacity is our faith. Here on the 
one hand is the boundless ocean of the Divine strength, 
unfathomable in its depth, full after all draughts, tideless 
and calm, in all its movement never troubled, in all its 
repose never stagnating; and on the other side is the 
empty aridity of our poor weak natures. Faith opens 
these to the influx of that great sea, and " according to 
our faith," in the exact measure of our receptivity, does it 
enter our hearts. In itself the gift is boundless. It has 
no limit except the infinite fulness of the power which 
worketh in us. But in reference to our possession it is 
bounded by our capacity, and though that capacity en- 
larges by the very fact of being filled, and so every 
moment becomes greater through fruition, yet at each 
moment it is the measure of our possession, and our faith 
is the measure of our capacity. Our power is God's 
power in us, and our faith is the power with which we 
grasp God's power and make it ours. So then, in regard 
to God, our faith is the condition of our being strengthened 
with might by His Spirit 

Consider, too, how the same faith has a natural opera* 
Hon on ourselves which tends to fit us for casting out the 
*vil spirits. Given a man full of faith, you will have a 
man tenacious in purpose, absorbed in one grand object, 
simple in his motives, in whom selfishness has been 
driven out by the power of a mightier love, and indolence 
stirred into unwearied energy. Such a man will be made 



14 THE SECRET OF POWER. [serm 

wise to devise, gentle to attract, bold to rebuke, fertile 
in expedients, and ready to be anything that may help 
the aim of his life. Fear will be dead in him, for faith 
is the true anaesthesia of the soul ; and the knife may 
cut into the quivering flesh, and the spirit be scarce 
conscious of a pang. Love, ambition, and all the 
swarm of distracting desires will be driven from the soul 
in which the lamp of faith burns bright Ordinary 
human motives will appeal in vain to the ears which have 
heard the tones of the heavenly music, and all the pomps 
of life will show poor and tawdry to the sight that has 
gazed on the vision of the great white throne and the 
crystal sea. The most ignorant and erroneous " religious 
sentiment " — to use a modern phrase — is mightier than 
all other forces in the world's history. It is like some 
of those terrible compounds of modern chemistry, an 
inert, innocuous-looking drop of liquid. Shake it, and 
it flames heaven high, shattering the rocks and ploughing 
up the soil Put even an adulterated and carnalised 
faith into the hearts of a mob of wild Arabs, and in a 
century they will stream from their deserts, and blaze 
from the mountains of Spain to the plains of Bengal 
Put a living faith in Christ and a heroic confidence in the 
power of His gospel to reclaim the worst sinners into a 
man's heart, and he will out of weakness be made strong, 
and plough his way through obstacles with the compact 
force and crashing directness of lightning. There have 
been men of all sorts who have been honoured to do 
much in this world for Christ Wise and foolish, learned 
and ignorant, differing in tone, temper, creed, forms of 



L] THE SECRET OF POWER. 15 

thought, and manner of working, in every conceivable 
degree; — but one thing, and perhaps one thing only, 
they have all had — a passion of enthusiastic personal 
devotion to their Lord, a profound and living faith in 
Him and in His salvation. All in which they differed 
is but the gay gilding on the soldier's coat That in 
which they were alike is as the strong arm which grasps 
the sword, and has its muscles braced by the very dutch. 
Faith is itself a source of strength, as well as the condition 
of drawing might from heaven. 

Consider, too, how faith has power over men who see 
it The exhibition of our own personal convictions has 
more to do in spreading them than all the arguments 
which we use. There is a magnetism and a contagious 
energy in the sight of a brother's faith which few men 
can wholly resist If you wish me to weep, your own 
tears must flow ; and if you would have me believe, let 
me see your soul heaving under the emotion which you 
desire me to feel. The arrow may be keen and true, the 
shaft rounded and straight, the bow strong, and the arm 
sinewy ; but unless the steel be winged it will fall to the 
ground long before it strikes the butt Your arrows 
must be winged with faith, else orthodoxy, and wise 
arrangements, and force and zeal, will avail nothing. 
No man will believe in, and no demon will obey, spells 
which the would-be exorcist only half believes himself. 
Even if he speak the name of Christ, unless he speak it 
with unfaltering confidence, all the answer he will get 
will only be the fierce and taunting question, " Jesus I 
know, and Fau, I know, but who are ye?" Brethren, 



16 THE SECRET OF POWER. [sum. 

let us give heed to the solemn rebuke which our Master 
lovingly reads to us in these words, and while we aim at 
the utmost possible perfection in all subordinate matters, 
let us remember that they all without faith are weak 
as an empty suit of armour with no life beneath the 
corslet ; and that faith without them all is strong, like 
the knight of old, who rode into the bloody field in 
simple silken vest, and conquered. That which deter- 
mines our success or failure in the work of our Lord 
is our faith, 

III. Our faith Is ever threatened by subtle unbelief. 

It would appear that the disciples were ignorant of the 
unbelief that had made them weak They fancied that 
they had confidence in their Christ-given power, and 
they certainly had in some dull kind of fashion expected 
to succeed in their attempt But He who sees the heart 
knew that there was no real living confidence in their 
souls ; and His words are a solemn warning to us all r 
of how possible it is for us to have our faith all honey- 
combed by gnawing doubt while we suspect it not, 
like some piece of wood apparently sound, the whole 
substance of which has been eaten away by hidden 
worms. We may be going on with Christian work, 
and may even be looking for spiritual results. We may 
fancy ourselves faithful stewards of the gospel, and all 
the while there may be an utter absence of the one thing 
which makes our words more than so much wind whist- 
ling through an archway. The shorn Samson went out 
" to shake himself as at other times," and knew not that 



L] THE SECRET OF POWER. 17 

the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him. Who 
among us is not exposed to the assaults of that pestilence 
that walketh in darkness ? and, alas I who among us can 
say that he has repelled the contagion ? Subtly it creeps 
over us all, the stealthy intangible vapour, unfelt till it 
has quenched the lamp which alone lights the darkness 
of the mine, and clogged to suffocation the labouring 
lungs. 

Our time, and the object in view, preclude my speaking 
of the general sources of danger to our faith, which are 
always in operation with a retarding force as constant as 
friction, as certain as the gravitation which pulls the 
pendulum to rest at its lowest point But I may very 
briefly particularize two of the enemies of that fakl^ 
which have a special bearing on our missionary work, 
and may be illustrated from the narrative before us, ~ 

First, all our activity in spreading the gospel, whether \ 
by personal effort or by our gifts, like every form of 
outward action, tends to become mechanical^ and to lose 
its connection with the motive which originated it. Of 
course it is also true, on the other side, that all outward 
action also tends to strengthen the motive from which it 
flows. But our Christian work will not do so, unless it 
be carefully watched, and pains be taken to keep it 
from slipping off its original foundation, and so altering 
its whole character. We may very easily become so 
occupied with the mere external occupation as to be 
quite unconscious that it has ceased to be faithful work, 
and has become routine, dull mechanism, or the result 
of confidence, not in Christ, whose power once flowed 

6 




18 THE SECRET OF POWER. [serm. 

through us, but in ourselves the doers. So these dis- 
ciples may have thought, " We can cast out this devil, 
for we have done the like already," and have forgotten that 
it was not they, but Christ in them, who had done it 

How widely this foe to our faith operates amid the 
multiplied activities of this busy age one trembles to think* 
We see all around us a Church toiling with unexampled 
expenditure of wealth, and effort, and time. It is diffi- 
cult to repress the suspicion that the work is out of 
proportion to the life. Ah, brethren, how much of all 
this energy of effort, so admirable in many respects, will 
He whose fan is in His hand accept as true service — 
how much of it will be wheat for the garner, how much 
chaff for the fire ? It is not for us to divide between the 
two, but it is for us to remember that it is not impossible to 
make of our labours the most dangerous enemy to the 
depth of our still life hidden with Christ in God, and 
that every deed of apparent service which is not the real 
issue of living faith is powerless for good to others, and 
heavy with hurt to ourselves. Brethren and fathers in 
the ministry I how many of us know what it is to talk 
and toil away our early devotion ; and all at once to 
discover that for years perhaps we have been preaching 
and labouring from mere habit and routine, like corpses 
galvanised into some ghastly and transient caricature of 
life. Christian men and women, beware lest this great 
enterprise of missions, which our fathers began from the 
holiest motives and in the simplest faith, should in our 
hand, be wrenched away from its only true basis, and be 
done with languid expectation and more languid desires of 



L] THE SECRET OF POWER. 19 

success, from no higher motive than that we found it in 
existence, and have become accustomed to carry it on. 
If that be our reason, then we harm ourselves, and 
mask from our own sight our own unbelief. If that 
be the case the work may go on for a while, like a 
clock ticking with fainter and fainter beats for a minute 
after it has run down; but it will soon cease, and 
neither heaven nor earth will be much the poorer for its 
ending. 

Again, the atmosphere of scornful disbelief which sur- 
rounded the disciples made their faith falter. It was too 
weak to sustain itself in the face of the consciousness 
that not a man in all that crowd believed in their power ; 
and it melted away before the contempt of the scribes 
and the incredulous curiosity of the bystanders, without 
any reason except the subtle influence which the opinions 
and characters of those around us have on us alL 

And, brethren, are not we in danger to-day of losing 
the firmness of our grasp on Christ, as our Saviour and 
the world's, from a precisely similar cause ? We live in 
an atmosphere of hesitancy and doubt, of scornful rejec- 
tion of His claims, of contemptuous disbelief in anything 
which a scalpel cannot cut We cannot but be conscious 
that to hold by Jesus Christ as the Incarnate God, the 
supernatural Beginning of a new life, the sole Hope of 
the world, is to expose ourselves to the contempt of so- 
called advanced and liberal thinkers, and to be out of 
harmony with the prevailing set of opinions. The 
current of educated thought runs strongly against such 
beliefs, and I suppose that every thoughtful man 

G t 



lo THE SECRET OF POWER. [sihm. 

among us feels that a great danger to our faith to-day 
comes from the force with which that current swings 
us round, and threatens to make some of us drag 
our anchors, and drift, and strike and go to pieces 
on the sands. For one man who is led by the sheer 
force of reason to yield to the intellectual grounds 
on which modern unbelief reposes, there are twenty 
who simply catch the infection in the atmosphere. They 
find that their early convictions have evaporated, 
they know not how j only that once the fleece was wet 
with dew and now it is dry. For unbelief has a conta- 
gious energy wholly independent of reason, no less than 
has faith, and affects multitudes who know nothing of 
its grounds, as the iceberg chills the summer air for 
leagues, and makes the sailors shiver long before they see 
its barren peaks. 

Therefore, brethren, let us all take heed to ourselves, 
lest we suffer our grasp of our dear Lord's hand to relax 
for no better reason than because so many have left His 
side. To us all His pleading love, which knows how 
much we are moulded by the example of others, is 
saying, in view of the fashion of unbelief, "Will ye also 
go away ? " Let us answer, with a clasp that clings the 
tighter for our danger of being sucked in by the strong 
current, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the 
words of eternal life." We cannot help seeing that the 
creeping paralysis of hesitancy and doubt about even the 
power of Christ's name is stealing over portions ot the 
Church, and stiffening the arm of its activity. Lips that 
once spoke with full confidence the words that cast out 



I ] THE SECRET OF POWER. 21 

^jd ^vils, mutte r thei^i^wjanj^ii^ 
Hearts that were once full of sympathy with the great 
purpose for which Christ died are growing cold to the work 
of preaching the gospel to the heathen, because they are 
growing to doubt whether, after all, there is any gospel 
at all This icy breath, dear brethren, is blowing over 
our Churches and over our hearts. And wherever it 
reaches, there labour for Jesus and for men languishes, 
and we recoil baffled with unavailing exorcisms dying in 
our throats, and the rod of our power broken in our 
hands. " Why could not we cast him out ? Because of 
your unbelief. " 

IV. Our faith can only be maintained by constant devo- 
tion and rigid self-denial. 

I have already detained you far too long, and can 
touch but very lightly on that solemn thought in which 
our Lord sets forth the condition of our faith, and there- 
fore of our power. This kind goeth not out but by prayer 
and fasting. The discipline then which nurtures faith is 
mainly moral and spiritual — not as a substitute for, or to 
the exclusion of, the intellectual discipline, which is pre- 
supposed, not neglected, in these words. 

The first condition of the freshness and energy of faith 
is constant devotion. The attrition of the world wears 
it thin, the distractions of life draw it from its clinging 
hold on Christ, the very toil for Him is apt to entice 
our thoughts from out of the secret place of the most 
High into the busy arena of our strife. Therefore we 
have ever need to refresh the drooping flowers of the 



y 



23 THE SECRET OF POWER. [serm. 

chaplet by bathing them in the Fountain of Life, to rise 
above all the fevered toil of earth to the calm heights 
where God dwells, and in still communion with Him tc 
replenish our emptied vessels and fill our dimly burning 
lamps with His golden oil. The sister of the cumbered 
Martha is the contemplative Mary, who sits in silence at 
the Master's feet and lets His words sink into her soul : 
the closest friend of Peter the apostle of action is John 
the Apostle of love. If our work is to be worthy, it 
must ever be freshened anew by our gaze into His face ; 
if our communion with Him is to be deep, it must never 
be parted from outward service. Our Master has left us 
the example, in that, when the night fell and every man 
went to his own home, Jesus went to the Mount of 
Olives ; and thence, after His night of prayer, came very 
early in the morning, to the temple, and taught. The 
stream that is to flow broad and life-giving through many 
lands must have its hidden source high among the pure 
snows that cap the mount of God. Thejna n that would 
work for God must live with God. It was from the 



height of transfiguration that Ht came, before whom 
the demon that baffled the disciples quailed and slunk 
away like a whipped hound. This kind goeth not out 
but by prayer. 

The second condition is rigid self-denial. Fasting is 
the expression of the purpose to control the lower life, 
and to abstain from its delights in order that the life of 
the spirit may be strengthened. As to the outward fact, 
it is nothing — it may be practised or not. If it be, it 
will be valuable only in so far as it flows from and 



L] THE SECRET OF POWER. 33 

strengthens that purpose. And such vigorous subordi- 
nation of all the lower powers, and abstinence from many 
an inferior good, both material and immaterial, is abso- 
lutely necessary if we are to have any wholesome 
strength of faith in our souls. In the recoil from the false 
asceticism of Roman Catholicism and Puritanism, 
has not this generation of the Church gone too far in 
the opposite direction? and in the true belief that 
Christianity can sanctify all joys, and ensure the har- 
monious development of all our powers, have we not 
been forgetting that hand and foot may cause us to 
stumble, and that we had better live maimed than die 
with all our limbs ? There is a true asceticism, a disci- 
pline — a "gymnastic unto godliness," as Paid calls it 
And if our faith is to grow high and bear rich clusters 
on the topmost boughs that look up to the sky, we 
must keep the wild lower shoots close nipped. Withoul 
rigid self-control and self-limitation, no vigorous faith. 

And without them no effectual work 1 It is no holi- 
day task to cast out devils. Self-indulgent men will 
never do it Loose-braced, easy souls, that lie open to 
all the pleasurable influences of ordinary life, are no more 
fit for God's weapons than a reed for a lance, or a bit 
of flexible lead for a spear-point The wood must be 
tough and compact, the metal hard and close-grained, 
out of which God makes His shafts. The brand that is 
to guide men through the darkness to their Father's home 
must glow with a pallor of consuming flame that purges 
its whole substance into light This kind goeth not out 
but by prayer and fasting. 



24 THE SECRET OF POWER. [serm. 

Dear brethren, what solemn rebuke these words have 
for us all to-day I How they winnow these works of 
Christian activity which bring us here this morning ! 
How they show us the hollowness of our services, the self- 
indulgence of our lives, the coldness of our devotion, the 
cowardice of our faith ! How marvellous they make the 
fruits which God's great goodness has permitted us to see 
even from our doubting service ! Let us turn to Him 
with fresh thankfulness that unto us, who are " less than 
the least of all saints, is this grace given, that we 
ihould preach among the nations the unsearchable riches 
of Christ" Let us not be driven from our confidence 
that we have a gospel to preach for all the world; but 
strong in the faith which rests on impregnable historical 
grounds, on our own experience of what Christ has done 
for us, and on eighteen centuries of growing power and 
unfolding wisdom, let us thankfully welcome all that 
modern thought may supply for the correction of errors in 
belief, in organization, and in life, that may have gathered 
round His perfect and eternal gospel — being assured, as 
we have a right to be, that all will but lift higher the Name 
which is above every name, and set forth more plainly 
that Cross which is the true tree of life to all the 
families of men. Let us cast ourselves before Him with 
penitent confession, and say,— O Lord, our strength I we 
have not wrought any deliverance on earth ; we have 
been weak when all Thy power was at our command ; we 
have spoken Thy word as if it were an experiment and a 
peradventure whether it had might ; we have let go Thy 
kand and lost Thy garment's hem from our slack grasp ; 



L] THE SECRET OF POWER. 3$ 



we have been prayerless and self-indulgent Therefore 
Thou hast put us to shame before our foes, and "our 
enemies laugh among themselves. Thou that dwellest 
between the cherubim shine forth; stir up Thy 
strength and come and save us !" Then will the last 
words that He spoke on earth ring out again from the 
throne : " All power is given unto Me in heaven and in 
earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations ; and lo, I 
am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.* 



SERMON 11/ 

THE PATTERN OF SERVICE, 

St. Mark TiL 33, 34. 

He touched his tongue ; and looking up to heaven, He sighed, and 
taith, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. 

T^OR what reason was there this unwonted slowness 
in Christ's healing works ? For what reason was 
there this unusual emotion ere He spoke the word which 
cleansed 

As to the former question, a partial answer may 
perhaps be that our Lord is here on half-heathen ground, 
where aids to faith were much needed, and His power had 
to be veiled that it might be beheld. Hence the miracle 
is a process rather than an act ; and, advancing as it does 
by distinct stages, is conformed in appearance to men's 
works of mercy, which have to adapt means to ends, and 
creep to their goal by persevering toil. As to the latter 
we know not why the sight of this one poor sufferer 
should have struck so strongly on the ever-tremulous 
chords of Christ's pitying heart ; but we do know that it 
was the vision brought before His spirit by this single 

• Preached before the Wesleyan Missionary Society. 



SERM. II.] THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. 27 

instance of the world's griefs and sicknesses, in which 
mass, however, the special case before Him was by no 
means lost, that raised His eyes to heaven in mute 
appeal, and forced the groan from His breast 

The " Missionary spirit " is but one aspect of the Chris- 
tian spirit We shall only strengthen the former as we 
invigorate the latter. Harm has been done, both to our- 
selves and to this great cause, by seeking to stimulate 
compassion and efforts for heathen lands by the use of 
other excitements, which have tended to vitiate even the 
emotions they have aroused, and are apt to fail us when 
we need them most It may therefore be profitable if we 
turn to Christ's own manner of working, and His own 
emotions in his merciful deeds, set forth in this remark- 
able narrative, as containing lessons for us in our 
missionary and evangelistic work. I must necessarily 
omit more than a passing reference to the slow process of 
healing which this miracle exhibits. But that, too, has its 
teaching for us, who are so often tempted to think our- 
selves badly used, unless the fruit of our toil grows up, 
like Jonah's gourd, before our eyes. If our Lord was 
content to reach His end of blessing step by step, we may 
well accept patient continuance in well-doing as the con- 
dition indispensable to reaping in due season. 

But there are other thoughts still more needful which 
suggest themselves. Those minute details which this 
evangelist ever delights to give of our Lord's gestures, 
words, looks, and emotions, not only add graphic force 
to the narrative but are precious glimpses of the very 
heart of Christ That fixed gaze into heaven, that groan 



2* THE PA TTERN OF SER VICE. [serm 



which neither the glorid seen above nor the conscious 
power to heal could stifle, that most gentle touch, as if 
removing material obstacles from the deaf ears, and 
moistening the stiff tongue that it might move more 
freely in the parched mouth, that word of authority 
which could not be wanting even when His working 
seemed likest a servant's, do surely carry large lessons for 
us. The condition of all service, the cost of feeling at 
which our work must be done, the need that the helpers 
should identify themselves with the sufferers, and the 
victorious power of Christ's word over all deaf ears — 
these are the thoughts which I desire to connect with our 
text, and to commend to your meditation to-day. 

L We have here set forth the foundation and condition 
of all true work for God in the Lords heavenward look. 

The profound questions which are involved in the fact 
that, as man, Christ held communion with God in the 
exercise of faith and aspiration, the same in kind as ours, 
do not concern us here. I speak to those who believe 
that Jesus is for us the perfect example of complete man- 
hood, and who therefore believe that He is " the leader 
of faith," the head of the long procession of those who in 
every age have trusted in God and been lightened. But, 
perhaps, though that conviction holds its place in our 
creeds, it has not been as completely incorporated with 
our thoughts as it should have been. There has, no 
doubt been a tendency, operating in much of our evan- 
gelical teaciiing, and in the common stream of orthodox 
opinion, to except, half unconsciously, the exercises of 



II.] THE PA TTERN OF SER VICE. 29 

the religious life from the sphere of Christ's example, and 
we need to be reminded that Scripture presents His vow, 
" I will put my trust in Him," as the crowning proof of 
His brotherhood, and that the prints of His kneeling 
limbs have left their impressions where we kneel before 
the throne. True, the relation of the Son to the Father 
involves more than communion — namely, unity. But if 
we follow the teaching of the Bible, we shall not presume 
that the latter excludes the former, but understand that 
the unity is the foundation of perfect communion, and the 
communion the manifestation, so far as it can be mani- 
fested, of the unspeakable unity. The solemn words 
which shine like stars — starlike in that their height above 
us shrinks their magnitude and dims their brightness, and 
fa. that they are points of radiance partially disclosing, 
and separated by, abysses of unlighted infinitude — tell us 
that in the order of eternity, before creatures were, there 
was communion, for " the Word was with God," and there 
was unity, for " the Word was God." And in the records 
of the life manifested on earth the consciousness of unity 
loftily utters itself in the unfathomable declaration, " I 
and my Father are one;" whilst the consciousness of 
communion, dependent like ours on harmony of will and 
true obedience, breathes peacefully in the witness which 
He leaves to Himself: "The Father has not left Me alone 
for I do always the things that please Him." 

We are fully warranted, then, in supposing that that 
wistful gaze to heaven means, and may be taken to sym- 
bolize, our Lord's conscious direction of thought and 
spiri* to God as He wrought His work of mercy. There 



30 THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. [serm. 

are two distinctions to be noted between His communion 
with God and ours before we can apply the lesson to our- 
selves. His heavenward look was not the renewal of 
interrupted fellowship, but rather, as a man standing 
firmly on firm rock may yet lift his foot to plant it again 
where it was before, and settle himself in his attitude 
before he strikes with all his might; so we may say 
Christ fixes Himself where He always stood, and grasps 
anew the hand that He always held, before He does the 
deed of power. The communion that had never been 
broken was renewed ; how much more the need that in 
our work for God the renewal of the — alas ! too sadly 
sundered — fellowship should ever precede and always 
accompany our efforts ! And again, Christ's fellowship 
was with the Father. Ours must be with the Father 
through the Son. The communion to which we are called 
is with Jesus Christ, in whom we find God 

The manner of that intercourse, and the various disci- 
pline of ourselves with a view to its perfecting, which 
Christian prudence prescribes, need not concern us here. 
As for the latter, let us not forget that a wholesome 
and vide-reaching self-denial cannot be dispensed with. 
Hands that are full of gilded toys and glass beads cannot 
grasp durable riches, and eyes that have been accustomed 
to glaring lights see only darkness when they look up 1© 
the violet heaven with all its stars. As to the former, 
every part of our nature above the simply animal is 
capable of God, and the communion ought to include 
our whole being. 

Christ is truth for the understanding, authority for the 



THE PA TTERN OF SER VICE. 31 

will, love for the heart, certainty for the hope, fruition for 
all the desires, and for the conscience at once cleansing 
and law. Fellowship with Him is no indolent passive- 
ness, nor the luxurious exercise of certain emotions, but 
the contact of the whole nature with its sole adequate 
object and rightful Lord. 

Such intercourse, brethren, lies at the foundation of 
all work for God. It is the condition of all our power. 
It is the measure of all our success. Without it we may 
seem to realize the externals of prosperity, but it will be 
all illusion. With it we may perchance seem to spend 
our strength for naught ; but heaven has its surprises ; and 
those who toiled, nor left their hold of their Lord in all 
their work, will have to say at last with wonder, as they 
see the results of their poor efforts, " Who hath begotten 
me these? behold, I was left alone; these, where had 
they been ? " 

Consider in few words the manifold ways in which the 
indispensable pre-requisite of all right effort for Christ 
may be shown to be communion with Christ 

The heavenward look is the renewal of our own vision 
of the calm verities in which we trust, the recourse for 
ourselves to the realities which we desire that others 
should see. And what is equal in persuasive power to 
the simple utterance of your own intense conviction? 
He only will infuse his own religion into other minds, 
whose religion is not a set of hard dogmas, but is fused 
by the heat of personal experience into a river of living 
fire. It will flow then, not otherwise. The only claim 
which the hearts of men will listen to, in those who would 



3* THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. [serm. 

win them to spiritual beliefs, is that ancient one : " That 
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked 
upon, declare we unto you." Mightier than all argu- 
ments, than all " proofs of the truth of the Christian re- 
ligion," and penetrating into a sphere deeper than that 
of the understanding, is the simple proclamation, " We 
have found the Messias." If we would give sight to the 
blind, we must ourselves be gazing into heaven. Only 
when we testify of that which we see, as one might who, 
standing in a beleaguered city, discerned on the horizon 
the filmy dust-cloud through which the spearheads of the 
deliverers flashed at intervals, shall we win any to gaze 
with us till they too behold and know themselves set 
free. 

The heavenward look draws new strength from the 
source of all our might In our work, dear brethren, 
contemplating as it ought to do exclusively spiritual 
results, what we do depends largely on what we are, and 
what we are depends on what we receive, and what we 
receive depends on the depth and constancy of our com- 
munion with God. " The help which is done upon earth 
He doeth it all Himself." We and our organisations are 
but the channels through which this might is poured ; 
and if we choke the bed with turbid masses of drift and 
heavy rocks of earthly thoughts, or build from bank to 
bank thick dams of worldliness compact with slime of sin, 
how shall the full tide flow through us for the healing of 
the salt and barren places ? Will it not leave its former 
course silted up with sand, and cut for itself new outlets, 
While the useless quays that once rang with busy life 



IL] THE PA TTERN OF SER VICE. 33 

stand silent, and " the cities are solitary that were full of 
people w ? We are 

" The trumpet at thy lips, the clarion 
Full of thy cry, sonorous with thy breath," 

Let us see to it that by fellowship with Christ we keep 
the passage clear, and become recipients of the inspiration 
which shall thrill our else-silent spirits into the blast of 
loud alarum and the ringing proclamation of the true King. 

The heavenward look will guard us from the tempta- 
tions which surround all our service, and the distractions 
which lay waste our lives. It is habitual communion 
with Christ alone that will give the persistency that 
makes systematic, continuous efforts for Him possible, and 
yet will keep systematic work from degenerating, as % 
ever tends to do, into mechanical work. There is no 
greater virtue in irregular desultory service than in syste^ 
matized labour. The one is not freer from besetting tempta- 
tions than the other, only the temptations are of different 
sorts. Machinery saves manual toil, and multiplies force, 
But we may have too heavy machinery for what engineers 
call the boiler power, — too many wheels and shafts for 
the steam we have to drive them with. What we want is 
not less organisation, or other sorts of it, but more force. 
Any organisation will do if we have God's Spirit breath- 
ing through it None will be better than so much old 
iron if we have not 

We are ever apt to trust to our work, to do it without 
a distinct recurrence at each moment to the principles on 
which it rests, and the motives by which it should be 



34 THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE. [serm. 

actuated, — to become so absorbed in details that we 
forget the purpose which alone gives them meaning, to 
over-estimate the external aspects of it, to lose sight of 
the solemn truths which make it so grand, and to think 
of it as common-place because it is common, as ordinary 
because it is familiar. And from these most real dangers, 
which beset us all, there is no refuge but the frequent, the 
habitual, gaze into the open heavens, which will show us 
again the realities of things, and bring to our spirits, 
dwarfed even by habits of goodness, the freshening of 
former motives by the vision of Jesus Christ 

Such constant communion will further surround ui 
with an atmosphere through which none of the many 
influences which threaten our Christian life and our 
Christian work can penetrate. As the diver in his bell 
sits dry at the bottom of the sea, and draws a pure air 
from the free heavens far above him, and is parted from 
that murderous waste of green death that clings so closely 
round the translucent crystal walls which keep him safe ; 
so we, enclosed in God, shall repel from ourselves all 
that would overflow to destroy us and our work, and may 
by His grace lay deeper than the waters some courses in 
the great building that shall one day rise, stately and 
nany-mansioned, from out of the conquered waves. For 
ourselves, and for all that we do for Him, living com- 
munion with God is the means of power and peace, of 
security and success. 

It was never more needful than now. Feverish activ- 
ity rules in all spheres of life. The iron wheels of the 
car which bears the modern idol of material progress 



II.] THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. 35 

whirl fast, and crush remorselessly all who cannot keep 
up the pace. Christian effort is multiplied and systema- 
tized beyond all precedent And all these things make 
calm fellowship with God hard to compass. The measure 
of the difficulty is the measure of the need. I, for my 
part, believe that there are few Christian duties more 
neglected than that of meditation, the very name of 
which has fallen of late into comparative disuse, — that 
augurs ill for the frequency of the thing. We are so busy 
thinking, discussing, defending, inquiring ; or preaching, 
and teaching, and working, that we have no time and no 
leisure of heart for quiet contemplation, without which 
the exercise of the intellect upon Christ's truth will not 
feed, and busy activity in Christ's cause may starve the 
soul. There are few things which the Church of this day 
in all its parts needs more than to obey the invitation, 
" Come ye yourselves apart into a lonely place, and rest 
awhile." 

Christ has set us the example. Let our prayers ascend 
as His did, and in our measure the answers which came 
to Him will not fail us. For us, too, "praying, the 
heavens " shall be " opened," and the peace-bringing 
spirit fall dove-like on our meek hearts. For us, too, 
when the shadow of our cross lies black and gaunt upon 
our paths, and our souls are troubled, communion with 
heaven will bring the assurance, audible to our ears at 
least, that God will glorify Himself even in us. If, after 
many a weary day, we seek to hold fellowship with God 
as He sought it on the Mount of Olives, or among the 
solitudes of the midnight hills, or out in the morning 

D 9 



36 THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE. [serm. 

freshness of the silent wilderness, like Him we shall have 
men gathering around us to hear us speak when we come 
forth from the secret place of the Most High. If our 
prayer, like His, goes before our mighty deeds, the voice 
that first pierced the skies will penetrate the tomb, and 
make the dead stir in their grave-clothes. If aur longing 
trustful look is turned to the heavens, we shall not speak 
in vain on earth when we say, " Be opened." 

Brethren, we cannot do without the communion which 
our Master needed. Do we delight in what strengthened 
Him ? Does our work rest upon the basis of inward 
fellowship with God which underlay His ? Alas ! that 
>ur Pattern should be our Rebuke, and the readiest way 
to force home our faults on our consciences should be 
$ie contemplation of the life which we say that we try 
Id copy ! 

II. We have here pity for the evils we would remove 
set forth by the LorcFs sigh. 

The frequency with which this Evangelist records our 
Lord's emotions on the sight of sin and sorrow has been 
often noticed. In his pages we read of Christ's grief at 
the hardness of men's hearts, of His marvelling because 
of their unbelief, of His being moved with compassion for 
an outcast leper and a hungry multitude, of His sighing 
deeply in His spirit when prejudiced hostility, assuming 
the appearance of candid inquiry, asked of Him a sign 
from heaven. All these instances of true human feeling, 
like His tears at the grave of Lazarus, and His weari- 
ness as He sat on the well, and His tired sleep in the 



II J THE PA TTERN OF SER VICE. 37 

stern of the little fishing-boat, and His hunger and His 
thirst, are very precious as aids in realizing His perfect 
manhood ; but they have a worth beyond even that 
They show us how the manifold ills and evils of man's 
fate and conduct appealed to the only pure heart that 
ever beat, and how quickly and warmly it, by reason of 
its purity, throbbed in sympathy with all the woe. One 
might have thought that in the present case the conscious- 
ness that His help was so near would have been sufficient 
to repress the sigh. One might have thought that the 
heavenward look would have stayed the tears, But 
neither the happiness of active beneficence, nor the 
knowledge of immediate cure, nor the glories above 
flooding His vision, could lift the burden from the 
labouring breast And surely in this, too, we may discern 
a law for all our efforts, that their worth shall be in pro- 
portion to the expense of feeling at which they are done. 
They predict the harvests in Egypt by the height which 
the river marks on the gauge of the inundation. So 
many feet there represents so much fertility. Tell me 
the depth of a Christian man's compassion, and I will tell 
you the measure of his fruitfulness. 

What was it that drew that sigh from the heart of 
Jesus ? One poor man stood before him, by no means 
the most sorely afflicted of the many wretched ones 
whom He healed. But He saw in him more than a 
solitary instance of physical infirmities. Did there not 
roll darkly before His thoughts that whole weltering sea 
of sorrow that moans round the world, of which here is 
but one drop that He could dry up ? Did there not rise 



38 THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE. [serm. 

black and solid against the clear blue to which He had 
been looking, the mass of man's sin, of which these bodily 
infirmities were but a poor symbol as well as a conse- 
quence ! He saw as none but He could bear to see, the 
miserable realities of human life. His knowledge of all 
that man might be, of all that the most of men were 
becoming, His power of contemplating in one awful 
aggregate the entire sum of sorrows and sms, laid upon 
His heart a burden which none but He have ever endured 
His communion with Heaven deepened the dark 
shadow on earth, and the eyes that looked up to God 
and saw Him, could not but see foulness where others sus- 
pected none, and murderous messengers of hell walking 
in darkness unpenetrated by mortal sight And all that 
pain of clearer knowledge of the sorrowfulness of sorrow, 
and the sinfulness of sin, was laid upon a heart in which 
was no selfishness to blunt the sharp edge of the pain nor 
any sin to stagnate the pity that flowed from the wound. 
To Jesus Christ, life was a daily martyrdom before death 
had "made the sacrifice complete," and He bore our 
griefs, and carried our sorrows through many a weary 
hour before He "bare them in His own body on the tree/' 
Therefore, " Bear ye one another's burden, and so fulfil 
the law " which Christ obeyed, becomes a command for 
all who would draw men to Him. And true sorrow, a 
sharp and real sense of pain, becomes indispensable as 
preparation for, and accompaniment to, our work, 

Mark how in us, as in our Lord, the sigh of compassion 
\& connected with the look to heaven. It follows upon 
that gaze. The evils are more real, more terrible, by 



II.] THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. 39 

their startling contrast with the unshadowed light which 
lives above cloudracks and mists. It is a sharp shock 
to turn from the free sweep of the heavens, starry and 
radiant, to the sights that meet us in " this dim spot 
which men call earth." Thus habitual communion with 
God is the root of the truest and purest compassion. It 
does not withdraw us from our fellow feeling with our 
brethren, it cultivates no isolation for undisturbed be- 
holding of God. It at once supplies a standard by which 
lo measure the greatness of man's godlessness, and there- 
fore of his gloom, and a motive for laying the pain of 
these upon our hearts, as if they were our own. He has 
looked into the heavens to little purpose who has not 
learned how bad and how sad the world now is, and 
how God bends over it in pitying love. 

And that same fellowship which will clear our eyes and 
soften our hearts, is also the one consolation which we 
have when our sense of all the ills that flesh is heir to 
becomes deep to near despair. When one thinks of the 
Teal facts of human life, and tries to conceive of the 
frightful meanness and passion and hate and wretched- 
ness that has been howling and shrieking and gibbering 
and groaning through dreary millenniums, one's brain 
reels, and hope seems to be absurdity, and joy a sin 
against our fellows, as a feast would be in a house next 
door to where was a funeral I do not wonder at settled 
sorrow falling upon men of vivid imagination, keen moral 
sense, and ordinary sensitiveness, when they brood long 
on the world as it is. But I do wonder at the superficial 
optimism which goes on with its little prophecies about 



40 THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE [serm. 

human progress, and its rose-coloured pictures of human 
life, and sees nothing to strike it dumb for ever ir men v s 
writhing miseries, blank failures, and hopeless end 
Ah ! brethren, if it were not for the heavenward look, how 
could we bear the sight of earth ! " We see not yet all 
things put under Him." No, God knows, far enough 
off from that Man's folly, man's submission to the 
creatures he should rule, man's agonies, and man's trans- 
gression, are a grim contrast to the Psalmist's vision. 
If we had only earth to look to, despair of the race, ex- 
pressed in settled melancholy apathy, or in fierce cynicism, 
were the wisest attitude. But there is more within our 
view than earth ; " we see Jesus ; " we look to the heaven, 
and as we behold the true man, we see more than ever, 
indeed,) how far from that pattern we all are ; but we can 
bear the thought of what men as yet have been, when we 
see that perfect example of what men shall be. The 
root and the consolation of our sorrow for men's evils is 
communion with God. 

Let me remind you, too, that still more dangerous than 
the pity which is not based upon, and corrected by, the 
look to heaven, is the pity which does not issue in 
strenuous work. It is easy to excite people's emotions ; 
but it is perilous for both the operator and the subject, 
unless they be excited through the understanding, and 
pass on the impulse to the will and the practical powers. 
The surest way to petrify a heart is to stimulate the 
feelings, and give them nothing to do. They will never 
recover their original elasticity if they have been wantonly 
drawn forth thus. Coldness, hypocrisy, spurious sen- 



II.] THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. 41 

timentalism, and a whole train of affectations and false- 
hoods follow the steps of an emotional religion, which 
divorces itself from active work. Pity is meant to impel 
to help. Let us not be content with painting sad and 
true pictures of men's woes, — of the gloomy hopelessness 
of idolatry, for instance, — but let us remember that every 
time our compassion is stirred, and no action ensues, our 
hearts are in some measure indurated, and the sincerity 
of our religion in some degree impaired. The white-robed 
Pity is meant to guide the strong powers of practical help 
to their work. She is to them as eyes to go before them 
and point their tasks. They are to her as hands to 
execute her gentle wilL Let us see to it that we rend 
them not apart; for idle pity is unblessed and fruitless 
as a sigh cast into the fragrant air, and unpitying work is 
more unblessed and fruitless still Let us remember, too, 
that Christlike and indispensable as Pity is, she is second, 
and not first Let us take heed that we preserve that order 
in our own minds, and in our endeavours to stimulate one 
another. For if we reverse it, we shall surely find the foun- 
tains of compassion dryingup long before the wide stretches 
of thirsty land are watered, and the enterprises which we 
have sought to carry on by appealing to a secondary motive, 
languishing when there is most need for vigour. Here is the 
true sequence which must be observed in our missionary 
and evangelistic work, " Looking up to heaven He sighed.* 
Dear brethren! must we not all acknowledge woful 
failures in this regard? How much of our service, our 
giving, our preaching, our planning, has been carried on 
without one thought of the ills and godlessness we profess 



O THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE. [serj 

to be seeking to cure ! If some angel's touch could 
annihilate all that portion of our activity, what gaps would 
be left in all our subscription lists, our sermons, and our 
labours both at home and abroad ! Annihilate, do I say ? 
It is done already. Such work is nothing, and comes to 
nothing. u Yea, it shall not be planted ; yea, it shall not 
be sown ; and He shall also blow upon it, and it shall 
wither." 

The hindrances to such abiding consciousness of and 
pity for the world's woes run all down to the one tap-root 
of all sin, selfishness. The remedies run all up to the 
common form of all goodness, the self-absorbing com- 
munion with Jesus Christ And besides that mother- 
tincture of everything wrong, subsidiary impediments may 
be found in the small amount of time and effort which 
any of us give to bring the facts of the world's condition 
vividly before our minds. The destruction of all emotion 
is the indolent acquiescence in general statements which 
we are too lazy or busy to break up into individual cases. 
To talk about hundreds of millions of idolaters leaves 
the heart untouched. But take one soul out of all that 
mass, and try to feel what his life is in its pitchy darkness, 
broken only by lurid lights of fear and sickly gleams of 
hope, in its passions ungoverned by love, its remorse 
uncalmed by pardon, its affections feeling like the tendrils 
of some climbing plant for the stay they cannot find, and 
in the cruel blackness that swallows it up irrevocable at 
last Follow him from the childhood that knows no 
discipline to the grave that knows no waking, and will 
not the solitary instance come nearer our hearts than the 



IL] THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE. 43 

millions ? But however that may be, the sluggishness ox 
our imaginations, the very familiarity with the awful facts, 
our own feeble hold on Christ, our absorption in personal 
interests, the incompleteness and desultoriness of our 
communion with our Lord, do all concur with our natural 
selfishness to make a sadly large proportion of our 
apparent labours for God and men utterly cold and 
unfeeling, and therefore utterly worthless. Has the 
benighted world ever caused us as much pain as some 
trivial pecuniary loss has done? Have we ever felt the 
smart of the gaping wounds through which our brothers' 
blood is pouring forth as much as we do the tiniest 
scratch on our own fingers ? Does it sound to us like 
exaggerated rhetoric when a prophet breaks out, " Oh 
that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of 
tears, that I might weep night and day ! n or when an 
apostle in calmer tones declares, " I have great heaviness 
and continual sorrow of heart" ? Some seeds are put to 
steep and swell in water, that they may be tested before 
sowing. The seed which we sow will not germinate 
unless it be saturated with our tears. And yet the sorrow 
must be blended with joy; for it is glad labour which is 
ordinarily productive labour — just as the growing time is 
the changeful April, and one knows not whether the 
promise of harvest is most sure in the clouds that drop 
fatness, or in the sunshine that makes their depths throb 
with whitest light, and touches the moist-springing blades 
into emeralds and diamonds. The gladness comes from 
the heavenward look, the pain is breathed in the deep- 
drawn sigh ; both must be united in us if we would 



44 THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE. [serm. 

" approve ourselves as the servants of God — as sorrowful, 
yet always rejoicing." 

III. We have here loving contact with those whom 
we would help set forth in the Lord's touch. 

The reasons for the variety observable in Christ's 
method of communicating supernatural blessing were, 
probably, too closely connected with unrecorded differ- 
ences in the spiritual conditions of the recipients to 
be distinctly traceable by us. But though we cannot 
tell why a particular method was employed in a given 
case, why now a word, and now a symbolic action, 
now the touch of His hand, and now the hem of His 
garment, appeared to be the vehicles of His power we 
can discern the significance of these divers ways, and 
learn great lessons from them aU. 

His touch was sometimes obviously the result of 
what one may venture to call instinctive tenderness, 
as when He lifted the little children in His arms and 
laid His hands upon their heads. It was, I suppose, 
always the spontaneous expression of love and com- 
passion, even when it was something more. 

The touch of His hand on the ghastly glossiness 
of the leper's skin was, no doubt, His assertion of 
priestly functions, and of elevation above all laws of 
defilement; but what was it to the poor outcast, who 
for years had never felt the warm contact of flesh 
and blood? It always indicated that He Himself was 
the source of healing and life. It always expressed 
His identification of Himself with sorrow and sick- 



II.] THE PA TTERN OF SER VICE. 45 

ness. So that it is in principle analogous to, and 
may be taken as illustrative of, that transcendent act 
whereby He became flesh, and dwelt among us. In- 
deed, the very word by which our Lord's taking the 
blind man by the hand is described in the chapter 
following our text, is that employed in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews when, dealing with the true brotherhood of 
Jesus, the writer says, " He took not hold of angels, but 
of the seed of Abraham He taketh hold." Christ's 
touch is His willing contact with man's infirmities and 
sins, that He may strengthen and hallow. 

And the lesson is one of universal application. 
Wherever men would help their fellows, this is a 
prime requisite, that the would-be helper should come 
down to the level of those whom he desires to aid. If 
we wish to teach, we must stoop to think the scholar's 
thoughts. The master who has forgotten his boyhood will 
have poor success. If we would lead to purer emotions, 
we must try to enter into the lower feelings which we 
labour to elevate. It is of no use to stand at the mouth 
of the alleys we wish to cleanse, with our skirts daintily 
gathered about us, and smelling-bottle in hand, to preach 
homilies on the virtues of cleanliness. We must go in 
among the filth, and handle it, if we want to have it 
cleared away. The degraded must feel that we do not 
shrink from them, or we shall do them no good. The 
leper, shunned by all, and ashamed of himself because 
everybody loathes him, hungers in his hovel for the grasp 
of a hand that does not care for defilement, if it can 
bring cleansing. Even in regard to common material 



46 THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE. [sum, 

helps the principle holds good We are too apt to cast 
our doles to the poor like the bones to a dog, and then 
to wonder at what we are pleased to think men's ingrati- 
tude. A benefit may be so conferred as to hurt more than 
a blow ; and we cannot be surprised if so-called charity 
which is given with contempt and a sense of superiority, 
should be received with a scowl, and chafe a man's spirit 
like a fetter. Such gifts bless neither him who gives nor 
him who takes. We must put our hearts into them, if 
we would win hearts by them. We must be ready, like 
our Master, to take blind beggars by the hand, if we 
would bless or help them. The despair and opprobrium 
of our modern civilization, the gulf growing wider and 
deeper between Dives and Lazarus, between Belgravia 
and Whitechapel, the mournful failure of legalized help, 
and of delegated efforts to bridge it over, the darkening 
ignorance, the animal sensuousness, the utter heathenism 
that lives in every town of England, within a stone's 
throw of Christian houses, and near enough to hear the 
sound of public worship, will yield to nothing but that 
sadly forgotten law which enjoins personal contact with 
the sinful and the suffering, as one chief condition of 
rasing them from the black mire in which they welter. 

But the same law has its special application in regard 
to the enterprise which summons us together to-day. 

It defines the spirit in which Christian men should 
proclaim the Gospel The effect of much well-meant 
Christian effort is simply to irritate. People are very 
quick to catch delicate intonations which reveal a secret 
sense, " how much better, wiser, more devout I am than 



II.] THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. 47 

these people ! " and wherever a trace of that appears in 
our work, the good of it is apt to be marred. We all 
know how hackneyed the charge of spiritual pride and 
Pharisaic self-complacency is, and, thank God, how 
unjust it often is. But averse as men may be to the 
truths which humble, and willing as they may be to 
assume that the very effort to present these to others on 
our parts implies a claim which mortifies, we may at least 
learn from the threadbare calumny, what strikes men 
about our position, and what rouses their antagonism to 
us. It is allowable to be taught by our enemies, 
especially when it is such a lesson as this, that we must 
carefully divest our evangelistic work of apparent pre- 
tensions to superiority, and take our stand by the side of 
those to whom we speak. We cannot lecture men into 
the love of Christ We can but win them to it by show- 
ing Christ's love to them ; and not the least important 
element in that process is the exhibition of our own love. 
We have a Gospel to speak of which the very heart is, 
that the Son of God stooped to become one with the 
lowliest and most sinful ; and how can that Gospel be 
spoken with power unless we, too, stoop like Him ? 

We have to echo the invitation, u Learn of me, for 
I am lowly in heart ; " and how can such divine words 
flow from lips into which like grace has not been poured ? 
Our theme is a Saviour who shrunk from no sinner, who 
gladly consorted with publicans and harlots, who laid His 
hand on pollution, and His heart, full of God and of love, 
on hearts reeking with sia and how can our message 
correspond with our theme if, even in delivering it, we 



48 THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. [serm. 

are saying to ourselves, u The Temple of the Lord are 
we : this people which knoweth not the law is cursed " ? 
Let us beware of the very real danger which besets us in 
this matter, and earnestly seek to make ourselves one with 
those whom we would gather into Christ, by actual 
familiarity with their condition, and by identification of 
ourselves in feeling with them, after the example of that 
greatest of Christian teachers who became " all things to 
all men, that by all means he might gain some ; " after 
the higher example, which Paul followed, of that dear 
Lord who, being highest, descended to the lowest, and in 
the days of his humiliation was not content with speaking 
words of power from afar, nor abhorred the contact of 
mortality and disease and loathsome corruption ; but laid 
His hands upon death, and it lived ; upon sickness, and it 
was whole ; on rotting leprosy, and it was sweet as the 
flesh of a little child. 

The same principle might be further applied to our 
Christian work, as affecting the form in which we should 
present the truth. The sympathetic identification of our- 
selves with those to whom we try to carry the Gospel will 
certainly make us wise to know how to shape our message. 
Seeing with their eyes, we shall be able to graduate the 
light Thinking their thoughts, and having in some 
measure succeeded, by force of sheer community of feeling, 
in having as it were got inside their minds, we shall 
unconsciously, and without effort, be led to such aspects 
of Christ's all-comprehensive truth as they most need 
There will be no shooting over people's heads, if we love 
them well enough to understand them. There will be n<* 



II.] THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. 49 

toothless generalities, when our interest in men keeps their 
actual condition and temptations clear before us. There 
will be no flinging fossil doctrines at them from a height, 
as if Christ's blessed Gospel were, in another than the 
literal sense, " a stone of offence," if we have taken our 
place on their level. And without such sympathy, these 
and a thousand other weaknesses and faults will certainly 
vitiate much of our Christian effort 

Let me not be misunderstood when I speak of adapting 
our presentation of the Gospel to the wants of those to 
whom we carry it That general statement may express 
the plainest dictate of Christian prudence or the most 
dangerous practical error. The one great truth of the 
Gospel wants no adaptation by our handling to any soul 
of man. It is fitted for all, and demands only plain, loving, 
earnest statement There must be no tampering with cen- 
tral verities, nor any diplomatic reserve on the plea of 
consulting the needs of the men whom we address. Ever? 
sinful spirit needs the simple Gospel of salvation by Jesu's 
Christ more than it needs anything else. Nor does adap- 
tation mean deferential stretching a point to meet man's 
wishes in our presentation of the truth. Their wishes have 
to be contravened, that their wants maybe met The 
truth which a man or a generation requires most is the 
truth which he or they like least ; and the true Christian 
teacher's adaptation of his message will consist quite as 
much in opposing the desires and contradicting the lies, as 
in seeking to meet the felt wants of the world. Nauseous 
medicines or sharp lancets are adapted to the sick man, 
quite as truly as pleasant food and soothing ointment 

n 



50 THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE. [SERM. 

But remembering all this, we still have a wide field for 
the operation of practical wisdom and loving common 
sense, in determining the form of our message and the 
manner of our action. And not the least important of 
qualifications for solving the problems connected there- 
with is cheerful identification of ourselves with the 
thoughts and feelings of those whom we would fain draw 
to the love of God. Such contact with men will win 
their hearts, as well as soften ours. It will make them 
willing to hear, as well as us wise to speak. It will enrich 
our own lives with wide experience and multiplied interests. 
It will lift us out of the enchanted circle which selfishness 
draws around us. It will silently proclaim the Lord from 
whom we have learnt it The clasp of the hand will be 
precious, even apart from the virtue that may flow from 
it, and may be to many a soul burdened with a con** 
sciousness of corruption, the dawning of belief in a love 
that does not shrink even from its foulness. Let us 
preach the Lord's touch as the source of all cleans- 
ing. Let us imitate it in our lives, that "if any will 
not hear the word, they may without the word be 
won." 

IV. We kave here the true healing power and the 
consciousness of wielding it set forth in the Lords 

authoritative word. 

All the rest of His action was either the spontaneous 
expression of His true participation in human sorrow, 
or a merciful veiling of His glory that sense-bound eyes 
might see it the better. But the word was the utterance 



II.] THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE. \\ 

of His will, and that was omnipotent The hand laid on 
the sick, the blind or the deaf was not even the channel 
of His power. The bare putting forth of His energy 
was all-sufficient In these we see the loving, pitying 
man. In this blazes forth, yet more loving, yet more 
compassionate, the effulgence of manifest God There- 
fore so often do we read the very syllables with which 
His " voice then shook the earth," vibrating through all 
the framework of the material universe. Therefore do 
the Gospels bid us listen when He rebukes the fever, 
and it departs ; when He says to the demons, " Go," and 
they go ; when one word louder in its human articulation 
than the howling wind hushes the surges ; when " Talitha 
cumi" brings back the fair young spirit from dreary 
wanderings among the shades of death. Therefore was 
it a height of faith not found in Israel when the Gentile 
soldier, whose training had taught him the power of 
absolute authority, as heathenism had driven him to long 
for a man who should speak with the imperial sway of a 
god, recognised in His voice an all-commanding power. 
From of old, the very signature of divinity has been 
declared to be, " He spake, and it was done ; " and He, 
the breath of whose lips could set in motion material 
changes, is that Eternal Word, by whom all things were 
made. 

What unlimited consciousness of sovereign dominion 
sounds in that imperative from His autocratic lips 1 It 
is spoken in deaf ears, but He knows that it will be 
heard. He speaks as the fontal source, not as the 
recipient channel of healing. He anticipates no delay, 

s % 



52 THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE. [SERM. 

no resistance. There is neither effort nor uncertainty 
in the curt command He is sure that He has power, 
and He is sure that the power is His own. 

There is no analogy here between us and Him. Alone, 
fronting the whole race of man, He stands — utterer of 
a word which none can say after Him, possessor of 
unshared might, " and of His fulness do all we receive." 
But even from that Divine authority and solitary sovereign 
consciousness we may gather lessons not altogether aside 
from the purpose of our meeting here to-day. Of His 
fulness we have received, and the power of the word on 
His lips may teach us that of His word even on ours, as 
the victorious certainty with which He spake His will of 
healing may remind us of the confidence with which it 
becomes us to proclaim His name. 

His will was almighty then. It is less mighty or less 
loving now? Does it not gather all the world in the 
sweep of its mighty purpose of mercy? His voice 
pierced then into the dull cold ear of death, and has 
it become weaker since? His word spoken by Him 
was enough to banish the foul spirits that run riot, swine- 
like, in the garden of God in man'i soul, trampling down 
and eating up its flowers and fruitage ; is the word spoken 
ef Him less potent to cast them out ? Were not all the 
mighty deeds which He wrought by the breath of His 
lips on men's bodies prophecies of the yet mightier which 
His Will of love, and the utterance of that Will by 
stammering lips, may work on men's souls. Let us not 
in our faintheartedness number up our failures, the deaf 
that will not hear, the dumb that will not speak His 



IL] THE PA TTERN OF SERVICE. 53 

praise, nor unbelievingly say Christ's own word was 
mighty, but the word concerning Christ is weak on our 
lips. Not so ; our lips are unclean, and our words are 
weak, but His word — the utterance of His loving Will 
that men should be saved — is what it always was and 
always will be. We have it, brethren, to proclaim. Did 
our Master countenance the faithless contrast between 
the living force of His word when He dwelt on earth, 
and the feebleness of it as He speaks through his 
servant ? If He did, what did He mean when He said, 
" He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he 
do also, and greater works than these shall he do, 
because I go unto the Father"? 

And the reflection of Christ's triumphant consciousness 
of power should irradiate our spirits as we do His work, 
like the gleam from gazing on God's glory which shone 
on the lawgiver's stern face while he talked with men. 
We have everything to assure us that we cannot fail. 
The manifest fitness of the Gospel to be the food of all 
souls ; the victories of eighteen centuries, which at least 
prove that all conditions of society, all classes of civiliza- 
tion, all varieties of race, all peculiarities of individual 
temperament, all depths of degradation and distances of 
alienation, are capable of receiving the word, which, like 
corn, can grow in every latitude, and though it be an 
exotic everywhere, can everywhere be naturalized ; the 
firm promises of unchanging faithfulness, the universal 
aspect of Christ's work, the prevalence of His continual 
intercession, the indwelling of His abiding Spirit, and, 
not least, the unerring voice of our own experience of 



54 THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. [serm. 

the power of the truth to bless and save,— all these are 
ours. In view of these, what have we to doubt ? Un- 
wavering confidence is the only attitude that corresponds 
to such certainties. We have a rock to build on ; let us 
build on it with rock. Putting fear and hesitancy far 
from us, let us gird ourselves with the joyful strength of 
assured victory, striking as those who know that conquest 
is bound to their standard, and through all the dust of 
the field seeing the fair vision of the final triumph. The 
work is done before we begin it " It is finished," was a 
clarion blast proclaiming that all was won when all 
seemed lost Weary ages have indeed to roll away 
before the great voice from heaven shall declare "It is 
done;" but all that lies between the two is but the 
gradual unfolding and appropriating of the results which 
are already secured. The strong man is bound; what 
remains is but the spoiling of his house. The head is 
bruised ; what remains is but the dying lashing of the 
snaky horror's powerless coils. " I send you to reap 
that whereon ye bestowed no labour." The tearful 
sowing in the stormy winter's day has been done by the 
Son of man. For us there remains the joy of harvest — 
hot and hard work, indeed, but gladsome too. 

Then, however languor and despondency may some- 
times tempt us, thinking of slow advancement, and dying 
men who fade from the place of the living before the 
gradual light has reached their eyes, our duty is plain — - 
to be sure that the word we carry cannot faiL You 
remember the old story, how when Jerusalem was in her 
hour of direst need, and the army of Babylon lay around 



a] THE PA TTERN OF SER VICE. 55 

her battered walls, the prophet was bid to buy " the field 
that is in Anathoth, in the country of Benjamin," for a 
sign that the transient fury of the invader would be 
beaten back, that Israel might again dwell safely in the 
land So with us, the hosts of our king's enemies coime 
wp like a river strong and mighty ; but all this world, 
held though it be by the usurper, is still " Thy land, O 
Immanuel," and over it all Thy peaceful rule shall be 
established I 

Many things in this day tempt the witnesses of God to 
speak with doubting voice. Angry opposition, contemp- 
tuous denial, complacent assumption that a belief in 
old-fashioned evangelical truth is, ipso facto> a proof of 
mental weakness, abound. Let them not rob us of our 
confidence. Shame on us if we let ourselves be frightened 
from it by a sarcasm or a laugh ! Do you fall back on 
all these grounds for assured reliance to which I have 
referred, and make the good old answer, yours, " Why, 
herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not whence 
He is, and yet — He hath opened mine eyes ? n 

Trust the word you have to speak. Speak it and work 
for its diffusion as if you did trust it Do not preach it 
as if it were a notion of your own. In so far as it is, it will 
share the fate of all human conceptions of Divine realities 
— "will have its day, and cease to be." Do not speak 
it as if it were some new nostrum for curing the ills of 
humanity, which might answer or might not Speak it as 
if it were what it is — the word of God, which liveth and 
abideth for ever. Speak it as if you were what you are* 
neither its inventors nor its discoverers, but only its mes- 



56 THE PA TTERN OF SER VICE. [serm. 

sengers, who have but to " preach the preaching which 
He bids " you. And to all the wide-spread questionings 
of this day, filmy and air-filling as the gossamers of an 
autumn evening, to all the theories of speculation, and 
all the panaceas of unbelieving philanthropy, present the 
solid certainties of our inmost experience, the yet more 
solid certainty of that all-loving name and all-sufficient 
work on which these repose. " We know that we are of 
God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we 
know that the Son of God is come." Then our pro- 
clamation, " This is the true God and eternal life," will 
not be in vain ; and our loving entreaty, " Keep your- 
selves from idols," will be heard and yielded to in many 
a land. 

The sum of the whole matter is briefly this. The root 
of all our efficiency in this great task to which we, un- 
worthy, have been called, is in fellowship with Jesus 
Christ "The branch cannot bear fruit of itself; with- 
out me ye are nothing." Living near Him, and growing 
like Him by gazing upon him, His beauty shall pass inta 
our faces, His tender pity into our hearts, his loving 
identification of Himself with men's pains and sins will 
fashion our lives ; and the word which He spoke with 
authority and assured confidence will be strong when we 
speak it with like calmness of certain victory. If the 
Church of Christ will but draw close to its Lord till the 
fulness of His life and the gentleness of His pity flow into 
heart and limbs, she will then be able to breathe the 
life which she has received into the prostrate bulk of a 
dead world. Only she must do, as the meekest of the 



II.] THE PATTERN OF SERVICE. 57 

prophets did in a like miracle, she must not shrink from 
the touch of the cold clay, nor the odour of incipient 
corruption, but, lip to lip, and heart to heart, must lay 
herself upon the dead, and he will live. 

The pattern for our work, dear brethren, is before us 
in the Lord's look, His sigh, His touch, His word. If we 
take Him for the example, and Him for the motive, Him 
for the strength, Him for the theme, Him for the reward of 
our service, we may venture to look to Him as the pro- 
phecy of our success, and to be sure that when our own 
faint hearts or an unbelieving world question the wisdom 
of our enterprise, or the worth of our efforts, we may answer 
as He did, " Go and show again those things which ye do 
hear and see ; the blind receive their sight, and the lame 
walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead 
are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached 
unto them," 



SERMON III. 

THE AWAKING OF ZION .• 

Isaiah lie> 

Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord ; awake, at in 
the ancient days, in the generations of old, 

Isaiah Hi. 1. 

Awake, awake ; pnt on thy strength, O Zion. 

T) OTH these verses are, I think, to be regarded as spoken 
"■^ by one voice, that of the servant of the Lord His 
majestic figure, wrapped in a light veil of obscurity, fills 
the eye in all these latter prophecies of Isaiah. It is some- 
times clothed with divine power, sometimes girded with 
the towel of human weakness, sometimes appearing like 
the collective Israel, sometimes plainly a single person. 

We have no difficulty in solving the riddle of the 
prophecy by the light of history. Our faith knows One 
who unites these diverse characteristics, being God and 
man, being the Saviour of the body, which is part of 
Himself and instinct with His life. If we may suppose 
that He speaks in both verses, then, in the one, as priest 

• Preached before the Baptist Missionary Society. 



SERM. III.] THE A WAKING OF ZION. 59 

and intercessor He lifts the prayers of earth to heaven 
ic His own holy hands — and in the other, as messenger 
and Word of God, He brings the answer and command 
of heaven to earth on His own authoritative lips — thus 
setting forth the deep mystery of His person and double 
office as mediator between man and God. But even if we 
set aside that thought, the correspondence and relation of 
the two passages remain the same. In any case they are 
intentionally parallel in form and connected in substance. 
The latter is the answer to the former. The cry of Zion 
is responded to by the call of God. The awaking of the 
arm of the Lord is followed by the awaking of the 
Church. He puts on strength in clothing us with His 
might, which becomes ours. 

The mere juxtaposition of these verses suggests the 
point of view from which I wish to treat them on this 
occasion. I hope that the thoughts to which they lead may 
help to further that quickened earnestness and expectancy 
of blessing, without which Christian work is a toil and a 
failure. 

We have here a common principle underlying both the 
clauses of our text, to which I must first briefly ask your 
attention, namely — 

L The occurrence in the ChurcKs history of successive 
periods of energy and of languor. 

It is freely admitted that such alternation is not the 
highest ideal of growth, either in the individual or in the 
community. Our Lord's own parables set forth a mor<$ 
excellent way — the way of uninterrupted increase, wher 



60 THE A WAKING OF ZION. [serm. 

the type is the springing com, which puts forth " first the 
blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear," 
and passes through all the stages from the tender green 
spikelets that gleam over the fields in the spring-tide 
to the yellow abundance of autumn, in one unbroken 
season of genial months. So would our growth be 
best, healthiest, happiest So might our growth be, if 
the mysterious life in the seed met no checks. But, as 
a matter of fact, the Church has not thus grown. Rather 
at the best, its emblem is to be looked for, not in corn, 
but in the forest tree — the very rings in whose trunk tell 
of recurring seasons when the sap has risen at the call of 
spring, and sunk again before the frowns of winter. I have 
not to do now with the causes of this. These will fall to 
be considered presently. Nor am I saying that such a 
manner of growth is inevitable. I am only pointing out a 
fact, capable of easy verification and familiar to us all. 
Our years have had summerand winter. The evening and 
the morning have completed all the days since the first 

We all know it only too well. In our own hearts we 
have known such times, when some cold clinging mist 
wrapped us round and hid all the heaven of God's love 
and the starry lights of His truth ; when the visible was 
the only real, and He seemed far away and shadowy ; 
when there was neither confidence in our belief, nor heat 
in our love, nor enthusiasm in our service; when the 
shackles of conventionalism bound our souls, and the 
fetters of the frost imprisoned all their springs. And we 
have seen a like palsy smite whole regions and ages of the 
Church of God, so that even the sensation of impotence 



Hi.] THE A WAKING OF ZION. 61 

was dead like all the rest, and the very tradition of 
spiritual power had faded away. I need not point to the 
signal historical examples of such times in the past 
Remember England a hundred years ago — but what need 
to travel so far. May I venture to draw my example 
from nearer home, and ask, have we not been in such 
an epoch? I beseech you, think whether the power 
which the Gospel preached by us wields on ourselves, 
on our churches, on the world, is what Christ meant it 
and fitted to exercise. Why, if we hold our own in 
respect to the material growth of our population, it is 
as much as we do. Where is the joyful buoyancy and 
expansive power with which the Gospel burst into the 
world? It looks like some stream that leaps from the 
hills, and at first hurries from cliff to cliff full of light 
and music, but flows slower and more sluggish as it 
advances, and at last almost stagnates in its flat marshes. 
Here we are with all our machinery, our culture, money, 
organizations — and the net result of it all at the year's end 
is but a poor handful of ears. " Ye sow much and bring 
home little." Well may we take up the wail of the old 
Psalm, " We see not our signs. There is no more any 
prophet; neither is there any among us that knoweth 
how long — arise, O Lord, plead Thine own cause." 

If then there be such recurring seasons of languor, they 
must either go on deepening till sleep becomes death, or 
they must be broken by a new outburst of vigorous life. 
It would be better if we did not need the latter. The 
uninterrupted growth would be best; but if that has not 
been, then the ending of winter by spring, and the 



6a THE A WAKING OF ZION. [serm. 

suppling of the dry branches, and the resumption of the 
arrested growth is the next best, and the only alternative 
to rotting away. 

And it is by such times that the Kingdom of Christ 
always has grown. Its history has been one of successive 
impulses gradually exhausted, as by friction and gravity, 
and mercifully repeated just at the moment when it was 
ceasing to advance and had begun to slide downwards. 
And in such a manner of progress, the Church's history 
has been in full analogy with that of all other forms of 
human association and activity. It is not in religion 
alone that there are "revivals," to use the word of which 
some people have such a dread. You see analogous 
phenomena in the field of literature, arts, social and 
political life. In them all there come times of awak- 
ened interest in long-neglected principles. Truths which 
for many years had been left to burn unheeded, save by 
a faithful few watchers of the beacon, flame up all at once 
the guiding pillars of a nation's march, and a whole 
people strike their tents and follow where they lead. A 
mysterious quickening thrills through society. A con- 
tagion of enthusiasm spreads like fire, fusing all hearts in 
one. The air is electric with change. Some great ad- 
vance is secured at a stride ; and before and after that 
supreme effort are years of comparative quiescence ; on 
the farther side perhaps of preparation, on the nearer 
side possibly of fruition and exhaustion — but slow and 
languid compared with the joyous energy of that moment 
One day may be as a thousand years in the history of a 
people, and a nation may be born in a day. 



III.] THE A WAKING OF ZION. 63 

So also is the history of the Church. And thank God 
it is so, for if it had not been for the dawning of these 
times of refreshing, the steady operation of the Church's 
worldliness would have killed it long ago. 

Surely, dear brethren, we ought to desire such a merci- 
ful interruption of the sad continuity of our languor and 
decay. The surest sign of its coming would be a wide- 
spread desire and expectation of its coming, joined with 
a penitent consciousness of our heavy and sinful slumber. 
For we believe in a God who never sends mouths but 
He sends meat to fill them, and in whose merciful provi- 
dence every desire is a prophecy of its own fruition. 
This attitude of quickened anticipation, diffusing itself 
silently through many hearts, is like the light air that 
springs up before sunrise, or like the solemn hush that 
holds all nature listening before the voice of the Lord in 
the thunder. 

And another sign of its approach is the extremity of the 
need. " If winter come, can spring be far behind ? " For 
He who is always with Zion strikes in with His help when 
the want is at its highest His " right early " is often the 
latest moment before destruction. And though we are 
all apt to exaggerate the need of the moment and the 
severity of our conflict, it certainly does seem that, whether 
we regard the languor of the Church or the strength of 
our adversaries, succour delayed a little longer would 
be succour too late. " The tumult of those that rise up 
against Thee increaseth continually. It is time for Thee 
to work." 

The juxtaposition of these passages suggests for ui— 



64 THE A WAKING OF ZION. [serm. 

II. The twofold explanation of these variations. 

That bold metaphor of God sleeping and waking is 
often found in Scripture, and generally expresses the 
contrast between the long years of patient forbearance, 
during which evil things and evil men go on their rebel- 
lious road unchecked but by Love, and the dread moment 
when some throne of iniquity, some Babylon cemented by 
blood, is smitten to the dust. Such is the original ap- 
plication of the expression here. But the contrast may 
fairly be widened beyond that specific form of it, and 
taken to express any apparent variations in the forth- 
putting of His power The prophet carefully avoids 
seeming to suggest that there are changes in God Him- 
self. It is not He but His arm, that is to say, His active 
energy, that is invoked to awake. The captive Church 
prays that the dormant might which could so easily shiver 
Her prison-house would flame forth into action. 

We may, then, see here implied the cause of these 
alternations of which we have been speaking on its Divine 
side, and then, in the corresponding verse addressed to 
the Church, the cause on the human side. 

As to the former. It is true that God's arm slumbers, 
and is not clothed with power. There are, as a fact, 
apparent variations in the energy with which He works 
in the Church and in the world. And they are real 
variations, not merely apparent. But we have to dis- 
tinguish between the power, and what Paul calls " the 
might of the power." The one is final, constant, un- 
changeable. It does not necessarily follow that the other 
is. The rate of operation, so to speak, and the amount 



III.] THE A WAKING OF ZION. 65 

of energy actually brought into play may vary, though the 
force remains the same. 

It is clear from experience that there are these varia 
tions; and the only question with which we are con 
cerned is, are they mere arbitrary jets and spurts of a 
Divine power, sometimes gushing out in full flood, some- 
times trickling in painful drops, at the unknown will 
of the unseen hand which controls the flow? Is the 
" law of the Spirit of Life " at all revealed to us ; or are 
the reasons occult, if there be any reasons at all other 
than a mere will that it shall be so ? Surely, whilst we 
never can know all the depths of His counsels and all the 
solemn concourse of reasons which, to speak in man's 
language, determine the energy of His manifested power, 
He has left us in no doubt that this is the weightiest 
part of the law which it follows — the might with which 
God works on the world through His Church varies 
according to the Church's receptiveness and faithfulness. 

Our second text tells us that if God's arm seems to 
slumber, and really does so, it is because Zion sleeps. In 
itself that immortal energy knows no variableness. " He 
fainteth not, neither is weary." " The Lord's arm is not 
shortened that He cannot save." " He that keepeth 
Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." But He works 
through us ; and we have the solemn and awful power 
of checking the might which would flow through us ; of 
restraining and limiting the Holy One of Israel. It 
avails nothing that the ocean stretches shoreless to the 
horizon; a jar can only hold a jarful. The receiver's 
capacity determines the amount received, and the 



66 THE A WAKING OF ZION. [serm. 

receiver's desire determines his capacity. The law has 
ever been, " according to your faith be it unto you." God 
gives as much as we will, as much as we can hold, as 
much as we use, and far more than we deserve. As 
long as we will bring our vessels the golden oil will flow, 
and after the last is filled, there yet remains more that we 
might have had, if we could have held it, and might 
have held if we would. " Ye are not straitened in Me, 
ye are straitened in yourselves/' 

So, dear brethren, if we have to lament times of torpor 
and small success, let us be honest with ourselves, and 
recognise that all the blame lies with us. If God's arm 
seems to slumber it is because we are asleep. His power 
is invariable, and the gospel which is committed to our 
trust has lost none of its ancient power, whatsoever men 
may say. If there be variations, they cannot be traced to 
the Divine element in the Church, which in itself is con- 
stant, but altogether to the human, which shifts and fluc- 
tuates, as we only too sadly know. The light in the 
beacon tower is steady, and the same ; but the beam it 
throws across the waters sometimes fades to a speck, and 
sometimes flames out clear and far across the heaving 
waves, according to the position of the glasses and shades 
around it The sun pours out heat as profusely and as 
long on the 22nd of December as on Midsummer-day, and 
all the difference between the frost and darkness and 
glowing brightness and flowering life, is simply owing to 
the earth's place in its orbit and angle at which the 
unalterable rays fall upon it The changes are in the ter- 
restrial sphere ; the heavenly is fixed for ever the same. 



III.] THE A WAKING OF ZION. ffj 

May I not venture to point an earnest and solemn 
appeal with these truths ? Has there not been poured 
over us the spirit of slumber ? Does it not seem as if 
an opium sky had been raining soporifics on our heads ? 
We have had but little experience of the might of God 
amongst us of late years, and we need not wonder at it 
There is no occasion to look far for the reason. You 
have only to regard the low ebb to which religious life 
has been reduced amongst us to have it all and more 
than all accounted for. I fully admit that there has been 
plenty of activity, perhaps more than the amount of real 
life warrants, not a little liberality, and many virtues. 
But how languid and torpid the true Christian life has 
been ! how little enthusiasm ! how little depth of com- 
munion with God ! how little unworldly elevation of soul ! 
how little glow of love ! An improvement in social posi- 
tion and circumstances, a freer blending with the national 
life, a full share of civic and political honours, a higher 
culture in our pulpits, fine chapels, and applauding con- 
gregations — are but poor substitutes for what many of us 
have lost in racing after them. We have the departed 
prophets' mantle, the outward resemblance to the fathers 
who have gone, but their fiery zeal has passed to heaven 
with them ; and softer, weaker men, we stand timidly on 
the river's brink, invoking the Lord God of Elijah, and 
too often the flood that obeyed them has no ear for our 
feebler voice. 

I speak to you, brethren, who are in some sort repre- 
sentatives of our churches throughout the land, and you 
can tell whether my words are on the whole true or over- 

f 1 



68 THE A WAKING OF ZION. [SERtt 

strained. We who labour in our great cities, what say 
we ? If one of the number may speak for the rest, we 
have to acknowledge that commercial prosperity and 
business cares, the eagerness after pleasure and the exi- 
gencies of political strife, diffused doubt and wide-spread 
artistic and literary culture, are eating the very life out of 
thousands in our churches, and loweriBg their fervour till, 
like molten iron cooling in the air, what was once all 
glowing with ruddy heat is crusted over with foul black 
scoriae ever encroaching on the tiny central warmth. 
You from our rural churches, what say you? Have 
you not to speak of deepening torpor settling down on 
quiet corners, of the passing away of grey heads leav- 
ing no successors, of growing difficulties and lessened 
power to meet them, that make you sometimes all but 
despair? 

I am not flinging indiscriminate censures. I know 
there are lights as well as shades in the picture. I am 
not flinging censures at all But I am giving voice to 
the confessions of many hearts, that our consciousness 
of our blame may be deepened, and we may hasten back 
to that dear Lord whom we have left to serve alone, as 
His first disciples left Him once to agonise alone under 
the gnarled olives in Gethsemane, while they lay sleeping 
in the moonlight Listen to His gentle rebuke, full of 
pain and surprised love, " What, could ye not watch with 
Me one hour ? " Listen to His warning call, loving as 
the kUs with which a mother wakes her child, "Arise, let 
us be going" — and let us shake the spirit of slumber 
from our limbs, and serve Him as those unsleeping spirits 



HI.] THE A WAKING OF ZION. 69 

do, who rest not day nor night from vision, and work, 
and praise. 

Ill, The beginning of all awaking is the ChurcKs earnest 
cry to God, 

It is with us as with infants, the first sign of whose 
awaking is a cry. The mother's quick ear hears it through 
all the household noises, and the poor little troubled 
life that woke to a scared consciousness of loneliness and 
darkness, is taken up into tender arms, and comforted 
and calmed. So, when we dimly perceive how torpid we 
have been, and start to find that we have lost our 
Father's hand, the first instinct of that waking, which must 
needs be partly painful, is to call to Him, whose ear 
hears our feeble cry amid the sound of praise like the 
voice of many waters, that billows round His throne, and 
whose folding arms keep us as one whom his mother 
eomforteth. The beginning of all true awaking must 
needs be prayer. 

For every such stirring of quickened religious life must 
needs have in it bitter penitence and pain at the discovery 
flashed upon us of the wretched deadness of our past — 
and, as we gaze like some wakened sleep-walker into the 
abyss where another step might have smashed us to atoms, 
a shuddering terror seizes us that must cry, " Hold Thou 
me up, and I shall be safe." And every such stirring of 
quickened life will have in it, too, desire for more of His 
grace, and confidence in His sure bestowal of it, which 
cannot but breathe itself in prayer. 

Nor is Zion's cry to God only the beginning and sign 



TO THE A WAKING OF ZION. [serm. 

of all true awaking ; it is also the condition and indis- 
pensable precursor of all perfecting of recovery from 
spiritual languor. 

I have already pointed out the relation between the 
waking of God and the waking of His Church, from 
which that necessarily follows. God's power flows into our 
weakness in the measure and on condition of our desires. 
We are sometimes told that we err in praying for the 
outpouring of His Holy Spirit, because ever since Pente- 
cost His Church has had the gift. The objection alleges 
an unquestioned fact, but the conclusion drawn from it 
rests on an altogether false conception of the manner 
of that abiding gift. The Spirit of God, and the power 
which comes from Him, are not given as a purse of money 
might be put into a man's hand once and for all, but they 
are given in a continuous impartation and communication 
and are received and retained moment by moment, 
according to the energy of our desires and the faithfulness 
of our use. As well might we say, Why should I ask for 
natural life, I received it half a century ago ? Yes, and 
at every moment of that half-century I have continued 
to live, not because of a past gift, but because at each 
moment God is breathing into my nostrils the breath of 
life. So is it with the life which comes from His Spirit 
It is maintained by constant efflux from the fountain of 
Life, by constant impartation of His quickening breath. 
And as He must continually impart, so must we con- 
tinually receive, else we perish Therefore, brethren, 
the first step towards awaking, and the condition of all 
true revival in our own souls and in our churches, is this 



HL] THE A WAKING OF ZION. 71 

earnest cry, " Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of 
the Lord* 

Thank God for the outpouring of a long unwonted 
spirit of prayer in many places. It is like the melting of 
the snows in the high Alps, at once the sign of spring 
and the cause of filling the stony river beds with flashing 
waters, that bring verdure and growth wherever they 
come. The winter has been long and hard. We have 
all to confess that we have been restraining prayer before 
God. Our work has been done with but little sense of 
our need of His blessing, with but little ardour of desire 
for His power. We have prayed lazily, scarcely believing 
that answers would come ; we have not watched for the 
reply, but have been like some heartless marksman who 
draws his bow and does not care to look whether his 
arrow strikes the target. These mechanical words, these 
conventional petitions, these syllables winged by no real 
desire, inspired by no faith, these expressions of devotion, 
far too wide for their real contents, which rattle in them 
like a dried kernel in a nut, are these prayers ? Is there 
any wonder that they have been dispersed in empty air, 
and that we have been put to shame before our enemies ? 
Brethren in the ministry, do we need to be surprised at 
our fruitless work, when we think of our prayerless studies 
and of our faithless prayers? Let us remember that 
solemn word, "The pastors have become brutish, and 
have not sought the Lord, therefore they shall not prosper, 
and all their flocks shall be scattered. " And let us all, 
brethren, betake ourselves, with penitence and lowly 
consciousness of our sore need, to prayer, earnest and 



72 THE AWAKING OF ZION. [serm. 

importunate, believing and persistent, like this heaven- 
piercing cry which captive Israel sent up from her weary 
bondage. 

Look at the passionate earnestness of it— expressed in 
the short, sharp cry, thrice repeated, as from one in 
mortal need ; and see to it that our drowsy prayers be 
like it Look at the grand confidence with which it 
founds itself on the past, recounting the mighty deeds of 
ancient days, and looking back, not for despair, but for 
joyful confidence on the generations of old ; and let our 
faint-hearted faith be quickened by the example, to expect 
great things of God. The age of miracles is not gone. 
The mightiest manifestations of God's power in the spread 
of the Gospel in the past remain as patterns for His 
future. We have not to look back as from low-lying 
plains to the blue peaks on the horizon, across which the 
Church's path once lay, and sigh over changed conditions 
of the journey. The highest water-mark that the river 
in flood has ever reached will be reached and over- 
passed again, though to-day the waters may seem to have 
hopelessly subsided. Greater triumphs and deliverances 
shall crown the future than have signalised the past Let 
our faithful prayer base itself on the prophecies of history 
and on the unchangeableness of Goi 

Think, brethren, of the prayers of Christ. Even He, 
whose spirit needed not to be purged from stains or 
calmed from excitement, who was ever in His Father's 
house whilst He was about His Father's business, blend- 
ing in one, action and contemplation, had need to pray. 
The moments of His life thus marked are very signifi- 



III.] THE A WAKING OF ZION. 73 

cant When He began His ministry, the close of the 
first day of toil and wonders saw Him, far from gratitude 
and from want, in a desert place in prayer. When He 
would send forth His apostles, that great step in advance, 
in which lay the germ of so much, was preceded by 
solitary prayer. When the fickle crowd desired to make 
Him the centre of political revolution, He passed from 
their hands and beat back that earliest attempt to 
secularize His work, by prayer. When the seventy 
brought the first tidings of mighty works done in His 
name, He showed us how to repel the dangers of success, 
in that He thanked the Lord of heaven and earth who 
had revealed these things to babes. When He stood by 
the grave of Lazarus, the voice that waked the dead was 
preceded by the voice of prayer, as it ever must be. 
When He had said all that He could say to His disciples, 
He crowned all with His wonderfid prayer for Himself, 
for them, and for us alL When the horror of great 
darkness fell upon His soul, the growing agony is marked 
by His more fervent prayer, so wondrously compact of 
shrinking fear and filial submission. When the cross was 
hid in the darkness of eclipse, the only words from the 
gloom were words of prayer. When, Godlike, He dis- 
missed His spirit, manlike He commended it to His 
Father, and sent the prayer from His dying lips before 
Him to herald His coming into the unseen world. 

One instance remains, even more to our present 
purpose than all these — " It came to pass, that Jesus 
also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, 
and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like 



74 THE A WAKING OF 2 JON. [serm. 

a dove upon Him." Mighty mystery ! In Him, too, 
the Son's desire is connected with the Father's gift, and 
the unmeasured possession of the Spirit was an answer 
to His prayer. 

Then, brethren, let us lift our voices and our hearts. 
That which ascends as prayer descends as blessing, like 
the vapour that is drawn up by the kiss of the sun to fall 
in freshening rain. " Call upon Me, and I will answer 
thee, and show thee great and hidden things which 
thou knowest not" 

IV. The answering call from God to Zion* 

Our truest prayers are but the echo of God's pn> 
mises. God's best answers are the echo of our prayers. 
As in two mirrors set opposite to each other, the same 
image is repeated over and over again, the reflection of 
a reflection, so here, within the prayer, gleams an earlier 
promise, within the answer is mirrored the prayer. 

And in that reverberation, and giving back to us of oui 
petition transformed into a command, we are not to see 
a dismissal of it as if we had misapprehended our true want 
It is not tantamount to, Do not ask me to put on my 
strength, but array yourselves in your own. The very 
opposite interpretation is the true one. The prayer o! 
Zion is heard and answered. God awakes, and clothes 
Himself with might. Then, as some warrior king, him- 
self roused from sleep and girded with flashing steel, bids 
the clarion sound through the grey twilight to summon 
the prostrate ranks that lie round his tent, so the sign of 
Cod's awaking and the first act of His conquering might 



IIL] THE A WAKING OF ZION. 75 

is this trumpet call — " The night is far spent, the day is 
at hand " — " put off the works of darkness," the night gear 
that was fit for slumber — "and put on the armour of 
light," the mail of purity that gleams and glitters even in 
the dim dawn. God's awaking is our awaking. He puts 
on strength by making us strong ; for His arm works 
through us, clothing itself, as it were, with our arm of 
flesh, and perfecting itself even in our weakness. 

Nor is it to be forgotten that this, like all God's 
commands, carries in its heart a promise. That earliest 
word of God's is the type of all His latter behests — " Let 
there be light " — and the mighty syllables were creative and. 
self-fulfilling. So ever with Him, to enjoin and to bestow 
are one and the same, and His command is His con- 
veyance of power. He rouses us by His summons, He 
clothes us with power in the very act of bidding us put 
it on. So He answers the Church's cry by stimulating us 
to quickened zeal, and making us more conscious of, and 
confident in, the strength which, in answer to our cry, He 
pours into our limbs. 

But the main point which I would insist on for the few 
moments that remain to me is the practical discipline 
which this Divine summons requires from us. 

And first, let us remember that the chief means of 
quickened life and strength is deepened communion with 
Christ. 

As we have been saying, our strength is ours by con- 
tinual derivation from Him. It has no independent 
existence, any more than a sunbeam could have, severed 
from the sun. It is ours only in the sense that it flowt 



76 THE A WAKING OF ZION. [serm. 

through us, as a river through the land which it enriches. 
It is His whilst it is ours, it is ours when we know it to 
be His. Then, clearly, the first thing to do must be to 
keep the channels free by which it flows into our souls, 
and to maintain the connection with the great Fountain 
Head unimpaired. Put a dam across the stream, and 
the effect will be like the drying up of Jordan before 
Israel " The waters that were above rose up upon an 
heap, and the waters that were beneath failed and were 
cut off," and the foul oozy bed was disclosed to the 
light of day. It is only by constant contact with Christ 
that we have any strength to put on. 

That communion with Him is no mere idle or passive 
thing, but the active employment of our whole nature 
with His truth, and with Him whom the truth reveals. 
The understanding must be brought into contact with 
the principles of His word, the heart must touch and 
beat against His heart, the will meekly lay the hand in 
His, the conscience ever draw at once its anodyne and 
its stimulus from His sacrifice, the passions know His 
finger on the reins, and follow led in the silken leash of 
love. Then, if I may so say, the prophet's miracle will 
be repeated in nobler form, and from Himself, the Life, 
thus touching all our being, life will flow into our dead- 
ness. " He put his mouth upon his mouth, and his 
eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands, and 
he stretched himself upon the child, and the flesh of 
the child waxed warm." 

So, dear brethren, all our practical duty is summed up 
in that one word, the measure of our obedience to which 



III.] THE A WAKING OF ZION. 77 

is the measure of all our strength — " Abide in Me, and 1 
in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, 
except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye 
abide in Me." 

Again, this summons calls us to the faithful use of the 
power which, on condition of that communion, we have. 

There is no doubt a temptation, in all times like the 
present, to look for some new and extraordinary forms of 
blessing, and to substitute such expectation for present 
work with our present strength. There is nothing new 
to look for. There is no need to wait for anything more 
than we possess. Remember the homely old proverb, 
"You never know what you can do till you try," and 
though we are conscious of much unfitness, and would 
sometimes gladly wait till our limbs are stronger, let us 
brace ourselves for the work, assured that in it strength 
will be given to us that equals our desire. There is a 
wonderful power in honest work to develop latent 
energies and reveal a man to himself. I suppose, in 
most cases, nobody is half so much surprised at a great 
man's greatest deeds as he is himself. They say that 
there is dormant electric energy enough to make a 
thunderstorm in a few raindrops, and there is dormant 
spiritual force enough in the weakest of us to flash into 
beneficent light, and peal notes of awaking into 
many a deaf ear. The effort to serve your Lord will 
reveal to you strength that you know not 

And it will increase the strength which it brings into 
play, as the used muscles grow like whipcord, and the 
practised fingers become deft at their task, and every 



78 THE A WAKING OF ZION. [serm. 

faculty employed is increased, and every gift wrapped in 
a napkin melts like ice folded in a cloth, according to 
that solemn law, " To him that hath shall be given, and 
from him that hath not shall be taken away even that 
which he hath." 

Then be sure that to its last particle you are using 
the strength you have, ere you complain of not having 
enough for your tasks. Take heed of the vagrant expec- 
tations that wait for they know not what, and the apparent 
prayers that are really substitutes for possible service. 
u Why liest thou on thy face ? Speak unto the children 
of Israel that they go forward." 

The Church's resources are sufficient for the Church's 
work, if the resources were used. We are tempted to 
doubt it, by reason of our experience of failure and our 
consciousness of weakness. We are more than ever 
tempted to doubt it to-day, when so many wise men are 
telling us that our Christ is a phantom, our God a stream 
of tendency, our Gospel a decaying error, our hope for 
the world a dream, and our work in the world done. We 
stand before our Master with doubtful hearts, and, as 
we look along the ranks sitting there on the green grass, 
and then at the poor provisions which make all our store, 
we are sometimes tempted almost to think that He errs 
when He says with that strange calmness of His, " They 
need not depart, give ye them to eat" 

But go out among the crowds and give confidently 
what you have, and you will find that you have enough 
and to spare. If ever our stores seem inadequate, it is 
because they arc reckoned up by sense, which takes 



m.] THE A WAKING OF ZION. 79 



cognizance of the visible, instead of faith which beholds 
the real. Certainly five loaves and two small fishes are 
not enough, but are not five loaves and two small fishes 
and a miracle-working hand behind them, enough ? It 
is poor calculation that leaves out Christ from the estimate 
of our forces. The weakest man and Jesus to back 
him are more than all antagonism, more than sufficient 
for all duty. Be not seduced into doubt of your power, 
or of your success, by others' sneers, or by your own 
faint-heartedness. The confidence of ability is ability. 
" Screw your courage to the sticking place, and you will 
not fail " — and see to it that you use the resources you 
have, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God 
" Put on thy strength, O Zion." 

So, dear brethren, to gather all up in a sentence, let us 
confidently look for times of blessing, penitently acknow- 
ledge that our own faithlessness has hindered the arm of 
the Lord, earnestly beseech Him to come in His rejoicing 
strength, and, drawing ever fresh power from constant 
communion with our dear Lord, use it to its last drop for 
Him. 

Then, like the mortal leader of Israel, as he pondered 
doubtingly with sunken eyes on the hard task before his 
untrained host, we shall look up and be aware of the 
presence of the sworded angel, the immortal Captain of 
the host of the Lord standing ready to save, " putting on 
righteousness as a breastplate, an helmet of salvation 
on His head, and clad with zeal as a cloak," From his 
lips, which give what they command, comes the call, 
" Take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may 



' 



So THE A WAKING OF ZION. [serm, iil 

be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done 
all, to stand." Hearkening to His voice, the city of the 
strong ones shall be made an heap before our wondering 
ranks, and the land open to our conquering march. 

Wheresoever we lift up the cry, " Awake, awake, put 
on strength, O arm of the Lord," there follows, swift 
as the thunderclap on the lightning flash, the rousing 
summons, * Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion ; 
put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem ! " Where- 
soever it is obeyed there will follow in due time the 
joyful chorus, as in this context, " Sing together, ye waste 
places of Jerusalem; the Lord hath made bare His 
holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends 
of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.* 



SERMON IV. 

•TIME FOR THEE TO WORK.** 

Psalm cxix. 126-8. 

It If time for Thee, Lord, to work : for they have made void Thy 
Law. Therefore I love Thy commandments above gold ; yea, 
above fine gold. Therefore I esteem all Thy precepts concerning 
all things to be right ; and I hate every false way. 

T F much that we hear be true, a society to circulate Biblet 
is a most irrational and wasteful expenditure of energy 
and money. We cannot ignore the extent and severity 
of the opposition to the very idea of Revelation even if 
we would ; we should not if we could. We are told with 
some exaggeration — the wish being father to the thought 
— that the educated mind of the country has broken with 
Christianity, — a statement which is equally remarkable 
for its accuracy and for its modesty. But it has a basis 
of truth in the widespread disbelief diffused through the 
literary and so-called cultivated classes. There is no 
need to spend your time in referring at length to facts 
which are only too familiar to most of us. Every 
sphere of knowledge, every form of literature, is enlisted 

• Preached before the National Bible Society of Scotland. 

O 



%2 " TIME FOR THEE TO WORK. 9 [serm. 

in the crusade. Periodicals that lie on all our tables, works 
of imagination that your daughters read, newspapers that 
go everywhere, are full of it Poetry, forgetting her 
lineage and her sweetness, strains her voice in rhapsodies 
of hostility. Science, leaping the hedge beyond which she 
at all events is a trespasser, — or, in finer language, " pro- 
longing its gaze backwards beyond the boundary of ex- 
perimental evidence," — or, in still plainer terms, guessing, 
— affirms that she discerns in matter the promise and 
potency of every form of life ; or presently, in a devouter 
mood, looking on the budding glories of the spring, 
declines to profess the creed of Atheism. Learned 
criticism demonstrates the impossibility of supernatural 
religion. The leader of an influential school leaves behind 
him a voice hollow and sad, as from the great darkness, 
in which we seem to hear the echoes of a life baffled in 
the attempt to harmonize the logical and the spiritual 
elements of a large soul : " There may be a God. The 
evidence is insufficient for proof. It only amounts to one 
of the lower degrees of probability. He may have given 
a revelation of His will There are grounds sufficient to 
remove all antecedent improbability. The question is 
wholly one of evidence ; but the evidence required has 
not been, and cannot be, forthcoming. There is room 
to hope for a future life, but there is no assurance what- 
ever. Therefore cultivate in the region of the imagina- 
tion merely those hopes which can never become certain* 
ties, for they are infinitely precious to mankind." 

Ah, brethren, do we not hear in these dreary words the 
cry of the immortal hunger of the soul for God, for the 



nr.] u TIME FOR THEE TO WORK? 83 

living God? The concessions they make to Christian 
apologists are noteworthy, but that unconscious con- 
fession of need is the most noteworthy. Surely, as the eye 
prophesies light, so the longing of the soul and the 
capacity for forming such ideals is the token that He is 
for whom heart and flesh do thus yearn. And how 
blessed is it to set over against these dreary ghosts that 
call themselves hopes, and that pathetic vain attempt to 
find refuge in the green fields of the imagination from 
the choking dust of the logical arena, the old faithful 
words : " This is the record, that God hath given to us 
•ternal life, and that this life is in His Son " 1 

But my object in referring to these forms of opinion 
was merely to prepare the way for my subsequent obser- 
vations ; I have no intention of dealing with any of them 
by way of criticism or refutation. This is not the place 
nor the audience, nor am I the person, for that task. 
But I have thought that it might not be inappropriate to 
this occasion if I were to ask you to consider with me, 
from these words, the attitude of mind and heart to God's 
word which becomes the Christian in times of opposition. 

The Psalmist was surrounded, as would appear, by 
widespread defection from God's law. But instead of 
trembling as if the sun were about to expire, he turns 
himself to God, and in fellowship with Him sees in all the 
antagonism but the premonition that He is about to act 
for the vindication of His own work. That confidence 
finds expression in the sublime invocation of our text 
Then, with another movement of thought, the contempla- 
tion of the departures makes him tighten his own hold 

O f 



84 u TIME FOR THEE TO WORK* [serm 

on the law of the Lord, and the contempt of the gain- 
sayers quicken his love : u Therefore I love," etc And, as 
must needs be the case, that love is the measure of his 
abhorrence of the opposite : and because God's command- 
ments are so dear to him, therefore he recoils with healthy 
hatred from false ways. So, I think, we have a fourfold 
representation here of our true attitude in the face o\ 
existing antagonism, — calm confidence in God's work 
for His law; earnest prayer, which secures the forth- 
putting of the divine energy : an increased intensity ol 
cleaving to the word ; and a decisive opposition to the 
ways which make it void 

I ask your attention to some remarks on each of these 
in their order. So, then, we have — 

I. Calm confidence that times of antagonism evoke God's 
work for His word. 

Now I daresay that some of you feel that is not the 
first thought that should be excited by the opposition 
aroundus. " We have no sort of doubt," you may say, 
" that God will take care of His own word, if there be 
such a thing ; but the question that presses is, Have we 
it in this book ? Answer that for us, and we will thank 
you ; but platitudes about God watching over His truth 
are naught. The first thing to do is to meet these argu- 
ments and establish the origin of Scripture. Then it will 
follow of itself that it will not perisL" 

But I take leave to think we, as Christians, arc not 
bound to revise the foundation belief of our lives at the 
call of every new antagonist Life is too short for that 



IV.] « TIME FOR THEE TO WORK? 85 

There is too much work waiting, to suspend our activity 
till we have answered each denier. We do not hold our 
faith in the word of God, as the winners at a match do 
their cups and belts, an condition of wrestling for them 
with any challenger. It is a perfectly legitimate position 
to say, We hold a ground of certitude, from which none 
of this strife of tongues is able to dislodge us. We have 
heard Him ourselves, and know that this is the Christ 
The Scriptures which we have received, not without 
knowledge of the grounds on which controversialists 
defend them, have proved themselves to us by their own 
witness. The light is its own proof. We have the experience 
of Christ and His law. He has saved our souls ; He has 
changed our lives. We know in whom we have believed ; 
and we are neither irrational nor obstinate when we avow 
that we will not pretend to suspend these convictions on 
the issue of any debate. We decline to dig up the piles 
of the bridge that carries us over the abyss because voices 
tell us that is rotten. It is shorter and perfectly reason- 
able to answer : " Rotten, did you say ? Well, we have tried 
it, and it bears ; " which, being translated into less simple 
language, is just the assertion of certitude built on facts 
and experience which leaves no place for doubt All the 
opposition will be broken into spray against that rock 
bulwark : " Thy words were found, and I did eat them, 
and they are the joy and rejoicing of my heart" 

So I venture to think that, speaking to Christian men 
and women, I have a right to speak on the basis of our 
common belief, and to encourage them to cherish it not- 
withstanding gainsayers. I am not counselling stolid 



36 "TIME FOR THEE TO WORK? [serm. 

indifference to the course of modern thought, nor desertion 
of the duty of defence. We are not to say, " God will 
interfere ; I need do nothing." But the task of con- 
troversy is not for all Christians, tor the duty of follow- 
ing the flow of opinion. There is plenty of more profit- 
able work than that for most of us. The temper which 
our text enjoins is for us all ; and this calm confidence, 
that at the right time God will work for His word, is its 
first element 

This confidence rests upon our belief in a divine Provi- 
dence that governs the world, and on the observed laws 
of its working. It is ever His method to send His suc- 
cour after the evil has been developed, and before it has 
triumphed Had it come sooner, the priceless benefits of 
struggle, the new perceptions won in controversy of the 
many-sided meaning and value of His truth, the vigour 
from conflict, the wholesome sense of our weakness, had 
all been lost Had it come later, it had come too late. 
So He times His help, in order that we may derive the 
greatest possible benefit from both the trial and the aid. 
We have all been dealt with so in our personal histories, 
whereof the very motto might be, " When I said my foot 
slippeth, Thy mercy, O Lord, held me up." The same 
law works on the wider platform. The enemy shall be 
allowed to pass through the breadth of the land, to 
spread dread and sorrow through village and hamlet, to 
draw his ranks round Jerusalem, as a man closes his hand 
on some insect he would crush. To-nwrrow, and the as- 
sault will be made ; but to-night " the angel of the Lord 
went forth and smote the camp ; and when they arose in 



IV.] « TIME FOR THEE TO WORK* 87 

the morning," expecting to hear the wild war-cry of the 
conquerors as they stormed across the undefended walls, 
" they were all dead corpses. " Then, as it would appear, 
a psalmist, moved by that mighty victory, cast it into 
words, which remain for all generations the law of the di- 
vine aid, and imply all that I am urging now : " The Lord 
is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved ; the Lord 
shall help her at the dawning of the morning. " True, 
we are no judges of the time. Our impatience is ever 
outrunning His calm deliberation. An illusion besets us 
all that our conflicts with unbelief are the severest the 
world has ever seen ; and there is a great deal of exag- 
geration on both sides at present as to the real extent 
and importance of existing antagonism to God's reve 
lation. A widespread literature provides so many — I 
would not say empty — spaces for any voice to reverbe- 
rate in, that both the shouters and the listeners are apt to 
fancy the assailants are an army, when they are only 
a handful, armed mainly with trumpets and pitchers, 
There have been darker days of antagonism than these. 
He that believeth shall not make haste. This confidence 
in the punctual wisdom of His working involves the other 
belief, that if He does not " work," it is because the time 
is not yet ripe ; the negations and contradictions have 
still an office to fulfil, and no hurt that cannot be repaired 
has been done to the faith of the Church or the power of 
the word. 

Nor can we forecast the manner of His working. He 
can call forth from the solitary sheepfolds the defender* 
of His word, as has ever been His wont, raising the man 



88 " TIME FOR THEE TO WORK* [serm. 

when the hour had come, even as He sent His Son in the 
fulness of time. He can lead science on to deeper truth ; 
He can quicken His Church into new life ; He can guide 
the spirit of an age. We believe that the history of the 
world is the unfolding of His will, and the course of 
opinion guided in its channel by the Voice which the 
depths have obeyed from of old. Therefore we wait for 
His working, expecting no miracle, prescribing no time, 
hurried by no impatience, avoiding no task of defence 
or confession ; but knowing that, unhasting and unresting 
He will arise when the storm is loudest, and somehow 
will say, " Peace ! be still. " Then they who had not 
cast away their confidence for any fashion of unbelief that 
passeth away will rejoice as they sing, " Lo I this is our 
God ; we have waited for Him, and He will save us." 

This confidence is confirmed by the history of all tht 
past assaults on Scripture. 

The whole history of the origin, collection, preservation, 
transmission, diffusion, and present influence of the Bible 
involves so much that is surprising and unique, as to 
amount to at least a strong presumption of a divine care. 
Among all the remarkable things about the Book, nothing 
is more remarkable than that there it is, after all that has 
happened. When we think of the gaps and losses in 
ancient literature, and the long stormy centuries that lie 
between us and its earlier pages, we can faintly estimate 
the chances against their preservation. It is strange that 
the Jewish race should have so jealously preserved books 
which certainly did not flatter national pride, which put 
a mortifying explanation on national disasters, which 



IV.] u TIME FOR THEE TO WORK? 89 

painted them and their fathers in dark colours, which 
proclaimed truths they never loved, and breathed a spirit 
they never caught. It is stranger still, that in the long 
years of dispersion the very vices and limitations of the 
people subserved the same end, and that stiff pedantry 
and laborious trifling — the poorest form of intellectual 
activity — should have guarded the letter of the word, as 
the coral insects painfully build up their walls round some 
fair island of the Southern Sea. When one thinks of the 
great gulf of language between the Old and New Testa- 
ments, of the variety of authors, periods, subjects, literary 
form, the animosities of Christian and Jew, it is strange 
that we have the Book here one> and that all these parts 
should blend into unity, unless the source and theme 
were one, and One Hand had shaped each, and cared for 
the gathering together of all. 

It has been demonstrated over and over again to have 
no pretensions to a divine revelation ; and yet here it is, 
believed by millions, and rooted so firmly in European 
language and thought, that no revolution short of a return 
to barbarism can abolish it It has been proved to be a 
careless, unauthenticated collection of works of different 
periods, styles, and schools of thought, having no unity 
but what is given by the bookbinder : and lo ! here it is 
still, not disintegrated, much less dissolved Each age 
brings its own destructive criticism to play on it, confess- 
ing thereby that its predecessors have effected nothing ; 
for, as the Bible says about sacrifices, so we may say about 
assaults on Scripture, " If they had done their work, would 
they not have ceased to be offered ? n And the effect of 



90 ■ TIME FOR THEE TO WORK. 9 [serm. 

the heaviest artillery that can be brought into position is 
as transient as the boom of their report and the puff of 
their smoke. Why, who knows anything about the 
world's wonders of books that a hundred years ago made 
good men's hearts tremble for the ark of God ? You may 
find them in dusty rows on the top shelves of great 
libraries. But if their names had not occurred in the 
pages of Christian apologists, flies in amber, nobody in 
this generation would ever have heard of them. And 
still more conspicuously is it so with earlier examples of 
the same kind. Their work is as hopelessly dead as 
they. And the Book seems none the worse for all the 
shot — like the rock that a ship fired at all night, taking 
it for an enemy, and could not provoke to answer nor 
succeed in sinking. Surely some dim suspicion of the 
hopelessness of the attempt might creep into the hearts 
of men who know what has been. Surely the signal 
failure and swift fading away of all former efforts to de- 
throne the Bible might lead to the question, " Does it not 
ky its deep foundations in the heart of man and the 
purpose of God, too deep to be reached by the short 
tools of mere criticism, too massive to be overthrown by 
all the weight of materialistic science ? " It is with the 
Bible as it was with the apostle, on whose hand, as he 
crouched over the newly-lit flame, the viper fastened, 
" and he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no 
harm." The barbarous people, who changed their 
minds after they had looked a great while and saw no 
harm come to him, were not altogether wrong, and might 
teach a lesson to some modern wise men, if, among 



IV.] u TIME FOR THEE TO WORK? 91 

the other facts which they deal with, they would try to 
estimate this fact of the continued existence and influence 
of Scripture, and the failure thus far of all attempts to 
shake its throne or break the sweet influences of its 
bands. 

Brethren, we, at all events, should learn the lesson of 
historical experience. The gospel, and the Book which 
is its record, have met with eager, eloquent, learned 
antagonists before to-day, and they have passed. Little 
more than a generation has sufficed to sweep them to 
oblivion. So it will be again. The forms of opinion, the 
tendencies of thought, which now seem to some of its 
enemies so certain to conquer, will follow these forgotten 
precursors into the dim land. May we not see them — 
these ancient discrowned kings that ruled over men and 
rebelled against Christ, these beliefs that no man now 
believes — rising from their shadowy thrones in the under- 
world to meet the now living and ruling unbelief, when it, 
too, shall have gone down to them? "All they shall 
speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak 
as we ? art thou become like unto us ? " Yes, each in 
its turn " becomes but a noise " when he " passes the time 
appointed" — the time when God arises to do His act 
and vindicate His word. 

We have here, secondly, Earnest prayer which brings 
that divine energy. 

The confidence that God will work underlies and gives 
energy to the prayer that God would work. The belief 
that a given thing is in the line of the divine purpose 



92 u TIME FOR THEE TO WORK* [serm. 

is not a reason for saying, "We need not pray; God 
means to do it," but is a reason for saying on the contrary, 
" God means to do it ; let us pray for it" And this 
prayer, based upon the confidence that it is His will, is 
the best service that any of us can render to the gospel 
in troublous times. 

I shall have a word to say presently on the sort of out- 
flow of the divine energy which we should principally 
expect and desire; but let me first remind you, very 
briefly, how the prayers of Christian men do condition — 
Fhad almost said regulate — that outflow. 

I need not put this matter on its abstract and metaphy- 
sical side. Two facts are enough for my present purpose 
—one, a truth of faith, that the actual power wherewith 
God works for His word remains ever the same ; one, a 
truth of observation and experience, that there are 
variations in the intensity of its operations and effects in 
the world. Wherefore ? Surely because of the variations 
in the human recipients and organs of the power. Here 
at one end is the great fountain, ever brimming. Draw 
from it ever so much, it sinks not one hairVbreadth in 
its pure basin. Here, on the other side, is an intermittent 
flow, sometimes in scanty driblets, sometimes in painful 
drops, sometimes more full and free on the pastures of 
the wilderness. Wherefore these jerks and spasms ? It 
must be something stopping the pipe. Yes, of course. 
God's might is ever the same, but our capacity of receiv- 
ing and transmitting that might varies, and with it varies 
the energy with which that unchanging power is exerted 
in the world. Our faith, our earnestness of desire, our 



IV.] u TIME FOR THEE TO WORK* 93 

ardour and confidence of prayer, our faithfulness of stew- 
ardship and strenuousness of use, measure the amount of 
the unmeasured grace which we can receive. So long as 
our vessels are brought, the golden oil does not cease to 
flow. When they are full, it stays. The principle of 
the variation in actual manifestation of the unvarying 
might of God is found in the Lord's words : " According 
to your faith be it unto you." So, then, we may expect 
periods of quickened energy in the forth-putting of the 
divine power. And these will correspond to, and be con- 
sequent on, the faithful prayers of Christian men. See 
to it, brethren, that you keep the channels clear, that the 
flow may continue full and increase. Let no mud and 
ooze of the world, no big blocks of sin nor subtler ac- 
cumulations of small negligences, choke them again. 
Above all, by simple, earnest prayer keep your hearts, as 
it were wide open to the Sun, and His light will shine on 
you, and His grace fructify through you, and His Spirit 
will work in you mightily. 

The tenor of these remarks presupposes a point on 
which I wish to make one or two observations now, viz. 
that the manner of the divine working which we should 
most earnestly desire in a time of diffused unbelief is the 
elevation of Christian souls to a higher spiritual life. 

I do not wish to exclude other things, but I believe 
that the true antidote to a widespread scepticism is a 
quickened Church. We may indeed desire that in other 
ways the enemy should be met We ought to pray that 
God would work by sending forth defenders of the truth, 
by establishing His Church in the firm faith of disputed 



94 * TIME FOR THEE TO WORK? [serm. 

verities, and by all the multitude of ways in which He 
can sway the thoughts and tendencies of men. But I 
honestly confess that I, for my part, attach but second- 
ary importance to controversial defences of the faith. 
No doubt they have their office 2 they may confirm a 
waverer; they may establish a believer; they may show 
onlookers that the Christian position is tenable; they 
may, in some rare cases of transcendent power, prevent 
a heresy from spreading and from descending to another 
generation. But oftenest they are barren of result ; and 
where they do their work, it is not to be forgotten there 
may remain as true a making void of God's law by an 
evil heart of unbelief as by an understanding cased in the 
mail of denial You may hammer ice on an anvil, or 
bray it in a mortar. What then ? It is pounded ice still, 
except for the little portion melted by heat of percussion, 
and it will soon all congeal again. Melt it in the sun, 
and it flows down in sweet water, which mirrors that light 
which loosed its bonds of cold. So hammer away at 
unbelief with your logical sledge-hammers, and you will 
change its shape, perhaps ; but it is none the less unbelief 
because you have ground it to powder. It is a mightier 
agent that must melt it, — the fire of God's love, brought 
close by a will itself ablaze with the sacred glow. 

Therefore, while giving all due honour to other forms 
of Christian opposition to the prevailing unbelief, I urge 
the cultivation of a quickened spiritual life as by far the 
most potent Does not history bear me out in that view ? 
What, for instance, was it that finished the infidelity of 
last century ? Whether had Butler's " Analogy " or Charles 



ivj "TIME FOR THEE TO WORK." 95 

Wesley's hymns, Pale/s " Evidences " or Whitefield's 
sermons, most to do with it ? A languid Church breeds 
unbelief as surely as a decaying oak fungus. In a condi- 
tion of depressed vitality, the seeds of disease, which a 
full vigour would shake off, are fatal Raise the temper- 
ature, and you kill the insect germs. A warmer tone of 
spiritual life would change the atmosphere which unbelief 
needs for its growth. It belongs to the fauna of the 
glacial epoch, and when the rigours of that wintry time 
begin to melt, and warmer days to set in, the creatures of 
the ice have to retreat to arctic wildernesses, and leave a 
land no longer suited for their life. A diffused unbelief, 
such as we see around us to-day, does not really arise 
from the logical basis on which it seems to repose. It 
comes from something much deeper, — a certain habit 
and set of mind which gives these arguments their force. 
For want of a better name, we call it the spirit of the age. 
It is the result of very subtle and complicated forces, 
which I do not pretend to analyze. It spreads through 
society, and forms the congenial soil in which these seeds 
of evil, as we believe them to be, take root Does any- 
body suppose that the growth of popular unbelief is owing 
to the logical force of certain arguments ? It is in the 
air ; a wave of it is passing over us. We are in a condi- 
tion in which it becomes epidemic. That is a doctrine 
which one influential school of modern disbelievers, at 
all events, cannot but admit What then ? Why, this 
— that to change the opinions you must change the at- 
mosphere ; or, in other words, the true antagonist of 
a diffused scepticism is a quickened Christian life. 



96 u TIME FOR THEE TO WORK? [serm. 

Brethren, if we had been what we ought, would such an 
environment have ever been possible as that which pro- 
duces this modern unbelief? Even now, depend upon 
it, we shall do more for Christ by catching and exhibiting 
more of His spirit than by many arguments — more by 
words of prayer to God than by words of reasoning to 
men. A higher tone of spiritual life would prove that 
the gospel was mighty to mould and ennoble character. 
If our own souls were gleaming with the glory of God, 
men would believe that we had met more than the 
shadow of our own personality in the secret place. If 
the fire of faith were bright in us, it would communicate 
itself to others, for nothing is so contagious as earnest- 
ness. If we believed, and therefore spoke, the accent 
of conviction in our tones would carry them deep into 
some hearts. If we would trust Christ's cross to stand 
firm without our stays, and, arguing less about it, would 
seldomer try to prop it, and oftener to point to it, it would 
draw men to it. When the power and reality of Scripture 
as the revelation of God are questioned, the best answer 
in the long-run will be a Church which can adduce itself 
as the witness, and can say to the gainsayers : " Why, 
herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from 
whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes." 
Brethren, do you see to it that your life be thus a witness 
that you have heard His voice ; and make it your con- 
tribution to the warfare of this day, that if you do not 
bear a weapon, you lift your hands and heart to God 
Moses on the mount helped the struggling ranks below 
in their hand-to-hand combat with Amalek. Hezekiah's 



IV.] « TIME FOR THEE TO WORK" 97 

prayer, when he spread the letter of the invader before 
the Lord, was more to the purpose than all his munitions 
of war. Let your voice rise to heaven like a fountain. 
Blessings will fall on earth. "Arise, O Lord, plead 
Thine own cause. The tumult of those that rise up 
against Thee increaseth continually.* 

III. We have here, thirdly, as the fitting attitude in 
times of widespread unbelief, a love to God's word made 
more fervid by antagonism. 

There may be a question what reason for the Psalmist's 
love is pointed at in this " therefore* We shall hardly 
be satisfied with the slovenly and not very reverent ex- 
planation, that the word is introduced, without any par- 
ticular meaning, because it begins with the initial letter 
proper to this section; nor does it seem enough to 
suppose a mere general reference to the excellences of 
the law of the Lord, which are the theme of the whole 
psalm. Such an interpretation blunts the sharp edge of 
the thought, and has nothing in its favour but the general 
want of connection between the separate verses. There 
are, however, one or two other instances where a thought 
is pursued through more than one verse, and the usual 
mere juxtaposition gives place to an interlocking, so that 
the construction is not unexampled. It is most natural 
to take the plain meaning of the words, and to suppose 
that when the Psalmist said, " They have made void Thy 
law, therefore I love Thy commandments," he meant, 
" The prevailing opposition is the reason why I, for my 
part, grasp Thy law more strongly." The hostility of 



98 ■ TIME FOR THEE TO WORK* [serm. 

others evokes my warmer love. The thought, so under- 
stood, is definite, true, and important, and so I venture 
to construe it, and enforce it as containing a lesson for 
the day. 

And here I would first observe, that I desire not to be 
understood as urging the substitution of feeling for reason, 
nor as trying to enlist passion in a crusade against the 
opponent's logic. Still less do I desire to counsel the 
exaggeration of opinions because they are denied — that 
besetting danger of all controversy. 

But, surely, the emotions have a place and an office, it 
not indeed in the search for, and the submission to, the 
truth of God, yet in the defence and adherence to that 
truth when found. The heart may not be the organ for 
the investigation and apprehension of truth, though it has 
a part to play even there ; but the tenacity with which I 
cleave to it, when apprehended, is far more an affair of the 
will than of the understanding — it is the heart's love 
steadying the mind, and holding it fixed to the rock. And 
love has a place in the defence of the truth. It gives 
weight to blows, and wings to the arrows. It makes 
arguments to be wrought in fire rather than in frost It 
lights the enthusiasm which cannot despair, the diligence 
that will not weary, the fervour that often goes farther to 
sway other minds than the sharpest dialectics of a pas- 
sionless understanding. There are causes in which an 
unimpassioned advocacy is worse than silence ; and this 
is one of them. The word of the living God, which has 
saved our souls and brought to us all that makes our 
natures rich and strong, and all that peoples the great 



iv.] u TIME FOR THEE TO WORK? 99 

darkness with fair hopes solid as certainties, demands and 
deserves fervour in its soldiers, and loyal love in its 
subjects. 

And while it is weakness to over-emphasise our beliefs 
merely because they are denied, and one of the saddest 
issues of controversy, that both sides are apt to be hurried 
into exaggerated statements which calmer thoughts would 
repudiate ; on the other hand, there is a legitimate pro- 
minence which ought to be given to a truth precisely 
because it is denied. The time to underline and accen- 
tuate strongly our convictions is, when society is slipping 
away from them, provided it be done without petulance, 
passion, or the falsehood of extremes. 

If ever there was a period when such general consider- 
ations as these had a practical application, this is the time. 
Would that all such as my voice reaches now would take 
these grand words for theirs : " They make void Thy law, 
therefore I love Thy commandments above gold; yea, 
above fine gold ! w 

Such increase of affection because of gainsayers is the 
natural instinct of loyal and chivalrous love. If your 
mother's name were defiled, would not your heart bound 
to her defence ? When a prince is a dethroned exile, his 
throne is fixed deeper in the hearts of his adherents 
" though his back be at the wall" and common souls 
become heroes because their devotion has been height- 
ened to sublimity of self-sacrifice by a nation's rebellion. 
And when so many voices are proclaiming that God has 
never spoken to men, that our thoughts of His Book are 
dreams, and its long empire over men's spirits a waning 

H a 



ioo ■ TIME FOR THEE TO WORK? [serm. 

tyranny, does cool indifference become us? Will not 
fervour be sobriety, and the glowing emotion of our whole 
nature our reasonable service ? 

Such increase of affection because of gainsayers is the 
fitting end and main blessing of the controversy which 
is being waged We never fully hold our treasures till 
we have grasped them hard, lest they should be plucked 
from us. No truth is established till it has been denied 
and has survived. Antagonism to the word of God 
should have, and will have, to those who use it rightly, a 
blessing in its train, in bringing out yet more of the pre- 
ciousness and manyfoldness, the all-sufficiency and the 
universality of the Book. " The more 'tis shook, the more 
it shines." The fiercer the blast, the firmer our confidence 
in the inexpugnable solidity of that tower of strength 
that stands four square to every wind that blows. " The 
word of the Lord is tried, therefore Thy servant loveth it" 
Such increase of attachment to the word of God 
because of gainsayers, is the instinct of self-preservation. 
The sight of so many making void the law makes a man 
bethink himself of what his own standing is. We, as they, 
are the children of the age. The tendencies to which they 
have yielded operate on us, too, and our only strength is, 
" Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe." The present 
condition of opinion remands us all to our foundations, 
and should teach us that nothing but firm adherence to 
God revealed in His word, and to the word which reveals 
God, will prevent us, too, from drifting away to shoreless, 
solitary seas of doubt, barren as the foam, and changeful 
as the crumbling, restless wave. 



IV.] u TIME FOR THEE TO WORK? ioi 

Such strength of affection in the presence of diffused 
doubt is not to be won without an effort. All our 
Churches afford us but too many examples of men and 
women who have lost the warmth of their first love, if not 
their love itself, for no better reason than because so 
many others have lost it. The effect of popular unbelief 
stretches far beyond those who are directly affected by its 
arguments, or avowedly adopt its conclusions. It is hard 
to hold by a creed which so many influential voices tell 
you it is a sign of folly, and being behind the age to 
believe. The consciousness that Christian truth is 
denied, makes some of you falter in its profession, and 
fancy that it is less certain simply because it is gainsaid. 
The mist wraps you in its folds, and it is difficult to keep 
warm in it, or to believe that love and sunshine are above 
it all the same. " Because iniquity shall abound, the love 
of many shall wax cold." 

Therefore, brethren, do you consciously endeavour that 
the tempest shall make you tighten your hold on Christ 
and His word. He appeals to us, too, with that most 
pathetic question, in which yearning for our love and 
sorrow over the departed disciples blend so wondrously, 
as if He cast Himself on our loyalty : " Will ye also go 
away?" Let us answer, not with the self-confidence 
that was so signally put to shame : " Though all should 
forsake Thee, yet will not I " ; but with the resolve that 
draws its firmness from His fulness and from our know- 
ledge of the power of His truth : " Lord, to whom shall 
we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life;* 



ioa « TIME FOR THEE TO WORK? [serm. 

IV. And, lastly, we have here, as the final trait in the 
temper which becomes such times, healthy opposition to 
the ways which make void the word of the Lord. 

That is the Psalmist's last movement of feeling, and 
you see that it comes second, not first, in the order of his 
emotions. It is the consequence of his love, the recoil of 
his heart from the practices and theories which contra- 
dicted God's law. 

Now, far be it from me to say a word which should fan 
the embers of the odium theoiogicum into a blaze against 
either men or opinions. But there is a truth involved 
which seems to be in danger of being forgotten at present, 
and that to the detriment of large interests as well as ot 
the forgetters. The correlative of a hearty love for any 
principle or belief is — we may as well use the obnoxious 
word — a healthy hatred for its denial and contradiction. 
They are but two aspects of one thing, like that pillar of 
old which, in its single substance, was a cloud and dark- 
ness to the foes, and gave light by night to the friends, 
of Him who dwelt in it Nay, they are but two names 
for the very same thing viewed in the very same motion, 
which is love as it yearns towards and cleaves to its 
treasure ; and hatred, as by the identical same act it 
recoils and withdraws from the opposite : " He will 
hold to the one, and therefore and therein despise the 
other." 

Much popular teaching as to Christian truth seems to 
me to ignore this plain principle, and to be working harm, 
especially among our younger cultivated men and women, 
whom it charms by an appearance of liberality, which, in 



iv.] « TIME FOR THEE TO WORK* 103 

their view, contrasts very favourably with the narrowness 
of us sectarians. I am free to admit that in our zeal 
about small matters (and in a certain " provincialism," so 
to speak, which characterised the type of English Christi- 
anity till within a recent period) we needed, and still 
need, the lesson, and I will thankfully accept the rebuke 
that reminds me of what I ever tend to forget, that the 
golden rod, wherewith the divine Builder measures from 
jewel to jewel in the walls of the New Jerusalem, takes 
in wider spaces than we have meted with our lines. But 
that is a very different matter from the tone which 
vitiates and weakens so much modern adherence to 
Christ's Gospel and Christ's Church. The old principle, 
"in essential unity, in non-essential liberty," made no 
attempt to determine what belonged to these two classes, 
and in practice their bounds may often have been 
wrongly set, so as to include many of the latter among 
the former ; but it at all events recognised the distinction 
as the basis of its next clause, " in all things charity." 
But now-a-days, to listen to some liberal teachers, one 
would think that nothing was necessary, except the great 
sacred principle, that nothing is necessary; and that 
charity could not exist, unless that distinction were 
effaced. 

I pray you, and if I may venture so far, I would 
especially pray my younger hearers, to take note, that 
however fair this way of looking at varying forms of 
Christian opinion may be, it really reposes on a basis 
which they will surely think twice before accepting, the 
denial that there is such a thing as intellectual certitude 



104 u TIME FOR THEE TO WORK* [serm, 

in religion which can be cast into definite propositions. 
If there be any truth at all, to confess it is to deny its 
opposite, to cleave to this is to reject that, to love the 
one is to hate the other. I fear, I know, that there are 
many minds among us who began with simply catching 
this tone of tolerance, and who have been insensibly 
borne along to an enfeebled belief that there is such a 
thing as religious truth at all, and that that truth lies in 
the word of God. Dear friends, let me beseech you to 
take heed lest, while you are only conscious of your 
hearts expanding with the genial glow of liberality, by 
little and little you lose your power of discerning between 
things that differ, your sense of the worth of the Scrip- 
ture as the depository of divine truth, and from your 
slack hand the hem of the vesture in which is healing 
should fall away. 

As broad a liberality as you please within the limits 
that are laid down by the very nature of the case. 
"These things are written that ye might believe that 
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye 
might have life through His name." Wheresoever that 
record is accepted, that divine name confessed, that faith 
exercised, and that life possessed, there, with all diver- 
sities, own a brother. Wheresoever these things are not, 
loyalty to your Lord demands that the strength of your 
love for His word should be manifested in the strength of 
your recoil from that which makes it void. " I love Thy 
commandments, and I hate every false way." 

I am much mistaken if times are not rapidly coming 
on us when a decisive election of His side will be forced 



iv.] u TIME FOR THEE TO WORK? 105 

on every man. The old antagonists will be face to face 
once more. Compromises and hesitations will not serve. 
The country between the opposing forces will be stript of 
every spot that might serve as cover for neutrals. On the 
one side a mighty host, its right the Pharisees of 
ecclesiasticism and ritual, with their banner of authority, 
making void the law of God by their tradition ; its left, 
and never far away from their opposites on the right, 
with whom they are strangely leagued, working into each 
other's hands, the Sadducees denying angel and spirit, 
with their war-cry of unfettered freedom and scientific 
evidence ; and in the centre, far rolling, innumerable, the 
dusky hosts of mere animalism, and worldliness, and self, 
making void the law by their sheer godlessness. And on 
the other side, " He was clothed with a vesture dipped in 
blood, and His name is called The Word of God, and 
they that were with Him were called, and chosen, and 
faithful." The issue is certain from of old. Do you see 
to it that you are of those who were valiant for the truth 
upon the earth. 

Let not the contradiction of many move you from your 
faith ; let it lift your eyes to the hills from whence cometh 
our help. Let it open your desires in prayer to Him who 
keeps His own word, that it may keep His Church and 
bless the world. Let it kindle into fervent enthusiasm, 
which is calm sobriety, your love for that word. Let it 
make decisive your rejection of all that opposes. Drift- 
wood may swim with the stream ; the ship that holds to 
her anchor swings the other way. Send that word far 
and wide. It is its own best evidence. It will correct 



106 u TIME FOR THEE TO WORK" [serm. it. 

all the misrepresentation of its foes, and supplement the 
inadequate defences of its friends. Amid all the changes 
of attacks that have their day and cease to be, amid all 
the changes of our representations of its endless fulness, it 
will live. Schools of thought that assail and defend it pass, 
but it abides. Of both enemy and friend it is true, " The 
grass withereth, and the flower thereof passeth away." 
How antique and ineffectual the pages of the past gene- 
rations of either are, compared with the ever-fresh youth 
of the Bible, which, like the angels, is the youngest and 
is the oldest of books. The world can never lose it ; 
and notwithstanding all assaults, we may rest upon His 
assurance, whose command is prophecy, when He says, 
" Write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, 
that it may be for the time to come for ever and ener? 



SERMON V. 

THE EXHORTATION OF BARNABAS.* 

Acts xL 23. 

Wko, when he came, and had seen the grace of God, was glad, and 
exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave 
unto the Lord. 

"DEFORE coming to the mere immediate consideration 
^ of these words, I may be allowed a brief reference 
to the innovation on the customary arrangements of your 
meetings, which gives me the honour of addressing you 
here. This is, I believe, the first occasion on which a 
member of another communion has preached before the 
Congregational Union. And though I unfeignedly wish 
that the task had fallen to some more worthy representa- 
tive of other Churches, I rejoice that you have set us all 
the example of thus recognising, in your most denomina- 
tional gatherings, your nearest ecclesiastical kindred. In 
our several localities and labour side by side, and on the 
whole, shoulder to shoulder, why should we ignore one 
another in our respective theories, conferences, and 

* Preached before the Congregational Union of England and 

Wales. 



io8 THE EXHORTA TION OF BARNABAS, [serm, 

general assemblies, even if for the present we may not 
add " convocations," to the list ? May your example be 
imitated I It does not become me to speak here of my 
own sense of the honour which you have done me, or of 
the extreme gratification with which I accept the re- 
sponsible duty of addressing an audience, including many 
from whom I would more gladly learn — a gratification 
shaded only by the feeling of my inability to speak words 
level with the occasion. And, now, let me turn to my text 
The first purely heathen converts had been brought into 
the Church by the nameless men of Cyprus and Cyrene, 
private persons with no office or commission to preach, 
who, in simple obedience to the instincts of a Christian 
heart, leaped the barrier which seemed impassable to the 
Church in Jerusalem, and solved the problem over which 
apostles were hesitating. Barnabas is sent down to see 
into this surprising new phenomenon, and his mission, 
though, probably, not hostile, was, at all events, one of 
inquiry and doubt But like a true man, he yielded to 
facts, and widened his theory to suit them. He saw the 
token of Christian life in these Gentile converts, and 
that compelled him to admit that the Church was wider 
than some of his friends in Jerusalem thought A preg- 
nant lesson for modern theorists who, on one ground or 
another of doctrine or of orders, narrow the great con- 
ception of Christ's Church ! Can you see " the grace of 
God in the people"? Then they are in the Church, what 
ever becomes of your theories, and the sooner you let them 
out so as to fit the facts, the better for you and for them. 
Satisfied as to their true Christian character, he sets 



v.] THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS. 109 

himself to help them to grow. Now, remember how 
recently they had been converted ; how, from their Gentile 
origin, they can have had next to no systematic instruction, 
how the taint of heathen morals, such as were common in 
that luxurious corrupt Antioch, must have clung to them ; 
how unformed must have been their loose Church organi- 
sation — and remembering all this, think of this one 
exhortation as summing up all that Barnabas had to 
say to them. He does not say, Do this, or Believe that, 
or Organise the other ; but he says, Stick to Jesus Christ 
the Lord. On this commandment hangs all the law ; it 
is the one all-inclusive summary of the duties of the 
Christian life. 

So, brethren and fathers, I venture to take these words 
now, as containing large lessons for us all, appropriate at 
all times, and especially in a sermon on such an occasion 
as the present. 

We may deal with the thoughts suggested by these 
words very simply, just looking at the points as they lie 
— what he saw, what he./W/, what he said. 

L What He saw. 

The grace of God here has very probably the specific 
meaning of the miracle-working gift of the Holy Spirit. 
That is rendered probable by the analogy of other in- 
stances recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, such as 
Peter's experience at Caesarea, where all his hesitations 
and reluctance were swept away when " the Holy Ghost 
fell on them as on us at the beginning, and they spake 
with tongues." So, what convinced Barnabas that these 



1 10 THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS, [serm. 

uncircximcised Gentiles were Christians like himself, may 
have been their equal possession of the visible and audible 
effects of that gift of God. But the language does not 
compel this interpretation; and the absence of all dis- 
tinct reference to these extraordinary powers as existing, 
there, among the new converts at Antioch may be intended 
to mark a difference in the nature of the evidence. At 
any rate, the possibly intentional generality of the expres- 
sion is significant and fairly points to an extension of the 
principle involved much beyond the limits of miraculous 
powers. There are other ways by which the grace of 
God may be seen and heard, thank God ! than by speak- 
ing with tongues and working miracles; and the first 
lesson of our text is that wherever that grace is made 
visible by its appropriate manifestations there we are to 
recognise a brother. 

Augustine said, " where Christ is there is the Church," 
and that is true, but vague ; for the question still remains, 
" and where is Christ ? " The only satisfying answer is, 
Christ is wherever Christlike men manifest a life drawn 
from, and kindred with, His life. And so the true form of 
the dictum for practical purposes comes to be : Where 
the grace of Christ is visible, there is the Church. 

That great truth is sinned against and denied in many 
ways. Most chiefly, perhaps, by the successors in modern 
garb of the more Jewish portion of that Church at 
Jerusalem who sent Barnabas to Antioch. They had no 
objection to Gentiles entering the Church, but they must 
come in by the way of circumcision ; they quite believed 
that it wai Christ who saved, and His grace which 



v.] THE EXHORTA TION OF BARNABAS. Ill 

sanctified, but they thought that His grace would only 
flow in a given channel; and so their modern repre- 
sentatives, who exalt sacraments, and consequently priests, 
to the same place as the Judaizers in the early Church 
did the rite of the old Covenant Such teachers have 
much to say about the notes of the Church, and have 
elaborated a complicated system of identification by 
which you may know the genuine article, and unmask 
impostors. The attempt is about as wise as to try to 
measure a network fine enough to keep back a stream. 
The water will flow through the closest meshes, and when 
Christ pours out the Spirit He is apt to do it in utter 
disregard of notes of the Church, and of channels of 
sacramental grace. 

We Congregationalists, who have no orders, no sacra- 
ments, no apostolic succession ; who in order not to break 
loose from Christ and conscience have had to break 
loose from " Catholic tradition," and have been driven to 
separation by the true schismatics, who have insisted on 
another bond of Church unity than union to Christ, are 
denied now-a-days a place in His Church. 

The true answers to all that arrogant assumption and 
narrow pedantry which confines the free flow of the 
water of life to the conduits of sacraments and orders, 
and will only allow the wind that bloweth where it listeth 
to make music in the pipes of their organs, is simply the 
homely one which shivered a corresponding theory to 
atoms in the fair open mind of Barnabas. 

The Spirit of Christ at work in men's hearts, making 
them pure and gentle, simple and unworldly, refining 



1 1 2 THE EXHOR TA TION OF BARNABAS, [serm. 

their characters, elevating their aims, toning their whole 
being into accord with the music of His life, is the true 
proof that men are Christians, and that communities of 
such men are Churches of His. Mysterious efficacy is 
claimed for Christian ordinances. Well, the question is a 
fair one. Is the type of Christian character produced 
within these sacred limits which we are hopelessly outside 
conspicuously higher and more manifestly Christlike than 
that nourished by no sacraments, and grown not under 
glass, but in the unsheltered open ? Has not God set His 
seal on these communities, to which we belong ? With 
many faults for which we have to be, and are, humble be- 
fore Him, we can point to the lineaments of the family 
likeness, and say "Are they Hebrews? so are we. Are 
they Israelites ? so are we. Are they the seed of Abraham ? 
so are we." 

Once get that truth wrought into men's minds that the 
true test of Christianity is the visible presence of a grace 
in character which is evidently God's, and whole moun- 
tains of prejudice and error melt away. We are just as 
much in danger of narrowing the Church in accordance 
with our narrowness as any ' * sacramentarian " of them all. 
We are tempted to think that no good thing can grow up 
under the baleful shadow of that tree, a sacerdotal Christi- 
anity. We are tempted to think that all the good people 
are dissenters, just as Churchmen are to think that nobody 
can be a Christian who prays without a prayer-book. 
Our own type of denominational character- — and there is 
such a thing — comes to be accepted by u* as the all but 
exclusive ideal of a devout man; and we have not 



v.] THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS. 113 

imagination enough to conceive, nor charity enough to 
believe in, the goodness which does not speak our dialect, 
nor see with our eyes. Dogmatical narrowness has 
built as high walls as ceremonial Christianity round th 
fold of Christ. And the one deliverance for us all frai 
the transformed selfishness, which has so much to do 
with shaping all these wretched narrow theories of the 
Church, is to do as this man did — open our eyes with 
sympathetic eagerness to see God's grace in many an 
unexpected place, and square our theories with His 
dealings. 

It used to be an axiom that there was no life in the 
sea beyond a certain limit of a few hundred feet. It was 
learnedly and conclusively demonstrated that pressure 
and absence of light, and I know not what beside, made 
life at greater depths impossible. It was proved that in 
such conditions creatures could not live. And then 
when that was settled, " The Challenger " put down her 
dredge five miles, and brought up healthy and good- 
sized living things, with eyes in their heads, from that 
enormous depth. So, then, the savant had to ask, how 
can there be life? instead of asserting there cannot 
be; and, no doubt, the answer will be forthcoming 
some day. 

We have all been too much accustomed to draw arbitrary 
limits to the diffusion of the life of Christ among men. 
Let us rather rejoice when we see forms of beauty, which 
bear the mark of His hand, drawn from depths that we 
deemed waste, and thankfully confess that the bounds of 
our expectation, and the framework of our institutions, 

1 



x 14 THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS, [serm. 

do not confine the breadth of His working, nor the 
sweep of His grace. 

21. What he fdt— he "was glad? 

It was a triumph of Christian principle to recognise the 
grace of God under new forms, and in so strange a 
place. It was a still greater triumph to hail it with re- 
joicing. One need not have wondered if the acknow- 
ledgement of a fact, dead in the teeth of all his prejudices, 
and seemingly destructive of some profound convictions, 
had been somewhat grudging. Even a good, true man 
might have been bewildered and reluctant to let go so 
much as was involved in the admission — " Then hath God 
granted to the Gentiles also repentance unto life," — and 
might have been pardoned if he had not been able to do 
more than acquiesce and hold his peace. We are scarcely 
just to these early Jewish Christians when we wonder at 
their hesitation on this matter, and are apt to forget the 
enormous strength of the prejudices and sacred con- 
viction which they had to overcome. Hence the context 
seems to consider that the quick recognition of their 
Christian character on the part of Barnabas, and his glad- 
ness at the discovery, need explanation, and so it adds, 
with special reference to these, as it would seem, " for he 
was a good man full of the Holy Ghost and of faith," as if 
nothing short of such characteristics could have sufficiently 
emancipated him from the narrowness that would have 
refused to discern the good, or the bitterness that would 
have been offended at it 

So, dear brethren, we may well test ourselves with this 



v.] THE EXHORTA TION OF BARNABAS. 115 

question : Does the discovery of the working of the grace 
of God outside the limits of our own Churches and com- 
munions excite a quick spontaneous emotion of gladness 
in our hearts ? It may upset some of our theories ; it 
may teach us that things which we thought very impor- 
tant, distinctive principles and the like, are not altogether 
as precious as we thought them ; it may require us to give 
up some pleasant ideas of our superiority, and of the 
necessary conformity of all good people to our type. Are 
we willing to let them all go, and without a twinge of 
envy or a hanging back from prejudice, to welcome the 
discovery that God fulfils Himself in many ways ? Have 
we schooled ourselves to say honestly, " Therein I do 
rejoice, yea, and will rejoice " ? 

There is much to overcome if we would know this 
Christlike gladness. The good and the bad in us may 
both oppose it. The natural deeper interest in the well- 
being of the Churches of our own faith and order, the 
legitimate ties which unite us with these, our conscientious 
convictions, our friendships, the esprit de corps born of 
fighting shoulder to shoulder, will, of course, make our 
sympathies flow most quickly and deeply in denomina- 
tional channels. And then come in abundance of 
less worthy motives, some altogether bad and some 
the exaggeration of what is good, and we get swallowed 
up in our own individual work, or in that of our " denomi- 
nation," and have but a very tepid joy in anybody else** 
prosperity. 

In almost every town of England, your Churches, and 
those to which I belong, with Presbyterians and Wesleyana, 

I % 



1 16 THE EXHORT A TION CF BARNABAS, [skrm. 

stand side by side. The conditions of our work make 
some rivalry inevitable, and none of us, I suppose, object 
to that It helps to keep us all diligent : a sturdy adherence 
to our several " distinctive principles," and an occasional 
hard blow in fair fight on their behalf we shall all insist 
upon. Our brotherhood is all the more real for frank 
speech, and " the animated no " is an essential in all inter- 
course which is not stagnant or mawkish. There is much 
true fellowship and much good feeling among all these. 
But we want far more of an honest rejoicing in each 
other's success, a quicker and truer manly sympathy with 
each other's work, a fuller consciousness of our solidarity 
in Christ, and a clearer exhibition of it before the 
world 

And on a wider view, as our eyes travel over the wide 
field of Christendom, and our memories go back over 
the long ages of the story of the Church, let gladness, 
and not wonder or reluctance, be the temper with which 
we see the graces of Christian character lifting their 
meek blossoms in corners strange to us, and breathing 
their fragrance over the pastures of the wilderness. In 
many a cloister, in many a hermit's cell, from amidst the 
smoke of incense, through the dust of controversies, we 
should see, and be glad to see, faces bright with the 
radiance caught from Christ Let us set a jealous watch 
over our hearts that self-absorption, or denomination- 
alism, or envy do not make the sight a pain instead of 
a joy ; and let us remember that the eye salve which 
will purge our dim sight to behold the grace of God in 
all its forms is that grace itself, which ever recognises it* 



T.] THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS. 1 17 

own kindred, and lives in the gladness of charity, and 
the joy of beholding a brother's good. If we are to have 
eyes to know the grace of God when we see it, and a 
heart to rejoice when we know it, we must get them 
as Barnabas got his, and be good men, because we are 
full of the Holy Ghost, and full of the Holy Ghost be- 
cause we are full of faith. 

III. What he said: he exhorted them all, that with 
purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord. 

The first thing that strikes one about this all-sufficient 
directory for Christian life is the emphasis with which 
it sets forth "the Lord" as the one object to be grasped 
and held. The sum of all objective Religion is Christ — 
the sum of all subjective Religion is cleaving to Him. A 
living person to be laid hold of, and a personal relation to 
that person, such is the conception of Religion, whether 
considered as revelation or as inward life, which under- 
lies this exhortation. Whether we listen to His own 
words about Himself and mark the altogether unpre- 
cedented way in which He was His own theme, and the 
unique decisiveness and plainness with which He puts His 
own personality before us as the Incarnate Truth, the 
pattern for all human conduct, the refuge and the rest for 
the world of weary ones ; or whether we give ear to the 
teaching of His apostles; from whatever point of view we 
approach Christianity, it all resolves itself into the person 
of Jesus Christ He is the Revelation of God ; theology 
properly so called is but the formulating of the fact! 
which He gives us ; and for the modern world the alter- 



1 18 THE EXHORT A TJON OF BARNABAS, [serm. 

native is, Christ the manifested God, or no God at all, 
other than the shadow of a name. He is the perfect 
exemplar of humanity ! The law of life and the power 
to fulfil the law are both in Him ; and the superiority of 
Christian morality consists not in this or that isolated 
precept, but in the embodiment of all goodness in His 
life, and in the new motive which He supplies for keep- 
ing the commandment Wrenched away from Him, 
Christian morality has no being. He is the sacrifice far 
the world, the salvation of which flows from what He 
does, and not merely from what He taught, or was. His 
personality is the foundation of His work, and the gospel 
of forgiveness and reconciliation is all contained in the 
name of Jesus. 

There is a constant tendency to separate the results of 
Christ's life and death, whether considered as revelation, 
ethics, or atonement, from Him, and unconsciously to 
make these the sum of our Religion, and the object of our 
faith. Especially is this the case in times of restless 
thought and eager canvassing of the very foundations of re- 
ligious belief like the present. Therefore it is wholesome 
for us all to be brought back to the pregnant simplicity of 
the thought which underlies this text, and to mark how 
vividly these early Christians apprehended a living Lord 
as the sum and substance of all which they had to grasp. 

There is a whole world between the man to whom 
God's revelation consists in certain doctrines given to us 
by Jesus Christ, and the man to whom it consists in that 
Christ Himselt Grasping a living person is not the 
tame as accepting a proposition. True, the propositions 



v.] THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS. 1 19 

are about Him, and we do not know Him without them. 
But equally true, we need to be reminded that He is our 
Saviour and not they y and that God has revealed Himself 
to us not in words and sentences but in a life. 

For, alas ! the doctrinal element has overborne the 
personal among all Churches and all schools of thought, 
and in the necessary process of formulating and systema- 
tising the riches which are in Jesus, we are all apt to 
confound the creeds with the Christ, and so to manipulate 
Christianity until, instead of being the revelation of a 
person and a gospel, it has become a system of divinity. 
Simple, devout souls have to complain that they cannot 
find even a dead Christ, to say nothing of a living one, 
for the theologians have taken away their Lord, and they 
know not where they have laid Him. 

It is, therefore, to be reckoned as a distinct gain that 
one result of the course of the more recent thought, both 
among friends and foes, has been to make all men feel 
more than before, that all revelation is contained in the 
living person of Jesus Christ. So did the Church believe 
before creeds were. So it is coming to feel again with a 
consciousness enriched and defined by the whole body of 
doctrine, which has flowed from Him during all the ages. 
That solemn, gracious figure rises day by day more clearly 
before men, whether they love Him or no, as the vital 
centre of this great whole of doctrines, laws, institutions, 
which we call Christianity. Round the story of His life the 
final struggle is to be waged. The foe feels that, so long as 
that remains, all other victories count for nothing. We 
feel that if that goes, there is nothing to keep. The 



iio THE EXHORT A TIOX OF BARNABAS, [serm 

principles and the precepts will perish alike, as the fair 
palace of the old legend, that crumbled to dust when its 
sr died But so long as He stands before mankind 
as He is painted in the Gospel, it will endure. If all 
else were annihilated, Churches, creeds and all, leave us 
these four gospels, and all else would be evolved again. 
The world knows now, and the Church has always known, 
though it has not always been true to the significance of 
the fact, that Jesus Christ is Christianity, and that because 
He lives, it will live also. 

And consequently the sum of all personal religion is 
this simple act described here as cleaving to Him, 

Need I do more than refer to the rich variety of symbols 
and forms of expression under which that thought is put 
alike by the Master and by His servants ? Deepest of all 
are His own gTeat words, of which our text is but a feeble 
echo, " Abide in Me, and I in you." Fairest of all is this 
lovely emblem of the vine, setting forth the sweet mystery 
of our union with Hinx Far as it is from the outmost 
pliant tendril to the root, one life passes to the very ex- 
tremities, and every cluster swells and reddens and 
mellows because of its mysterious flow. So also is Christ 
We remember how often the invitation flowed from His 
lips, Comt unto Me ; how He was wont to beckon men 
away from self and the world with the great command., 
Follow Me ; how He explained the secret of all true life to 
consist in eating Him. We may recall., too, the emphasis 
and perpetual reiteration with which Paul speaks of being 
" in Jesus " as the condition of all blessedness, power, and 
righteousness; and the emblems which he so often 



v.] THE EXHORTA TION OF BARNABAS. 121 

employs of the building bound into a whole on the 
foundation from which it derives its stability, of the body 
compacted and organised into a whole by the head from 
which it derives its life. 

We begin to be Christians, as this context tells us, 
when we " turn to the Lord." We continue to be Chris- 
tians, as Barnabas reminded these ignorant beginners, 
by " cleaving to the Lord." Seeing, then, that our great 
task is to preserve that which we have as the very founda- 
tion of our Christian life, clearly the truest method of so 
keeping it will be the constant repetition of the act by 
which we got it at first. In other words, faith joined us 
to Christ, and continuously reiterated acts of faith keep 
us united to Him. So, if I may venture, fathers and 
brethren, to cast my words into the form of exhortation, 
even to such an audience as the present, I would earnestly 
say, Let us cleave to Christ by continual renewal of our 
first faith in Him. 

The longest line may be conceived of as produced 
simply by the motion of its initial point So should our 
lives be, our progress not consisting in leaving our early 
acts of faith behind us, but in repeating them over and 
over again till the points coalesce in one unbroken line 
which goes straight to the Throne and Heart of Jesus. 
True, the repetition should be accompanied with fuller 
knowledge, with calmer certitude, and should come from 
a heart ennobled and encircled by a Christ-possessing 
past As in some great symphony the theme which was 
given out in low notes on one poor instrument recurs 
over and over again embroidered with varying harmonies, 



1 23 THE EXHOR TA TION OF BARNABAS, [serm. 

and unfolding a richer music till it swells into all the 
grandeur of the triumphant close, so our lives should be 
bound into a unity, and in their unity bound to Christ by 
the constant renewal of our early faith, and the fathers 
come round again to the place which they occupied when 
as children they first knew Him that is from the Begin- 
ning to the End one and the same. Such constant 
reiteration is needed, too, because yesterday's trust has no 
more power to secure to-day's union than the shreds of 
cloth and nails which hold last year's growth to the wall 
will fasten this year's shoots. Each moment must be 
united to Christ by its own act of faith, or it will be 
separated from Him. So living in the Lord we shall be 
strong and wise, happy and holy. So dying in the Lord 
we shall be of the dead who are blessed. So sleeping in 
fesus, we shall at the last be found in Him at that day, 
and shall be raised up together, and made to sit together 
in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. 

But more specially let us cleave to Christ by habitual 
contemplation. There can be no real continuous closeness 
of intercourse with Him, except by thought ever recurring 
to Him amidst all the tumult of our busy days. I do not 
mean professional thinking, or controversial thinking, of 
which we ministers have more than enough. 

There is another mood of mind in which to approach 
our Lord than these, a mood sadly unfamiliar, I am afraid, 
in these days : when poor Mary has hardly a chance of a 
reputation for " usefulness " by the side of busy bustling 
Martha — that still contemplation of the truth which we 
possess, not with the view of discovering its foundations, 



*.] THE EXHORTA TION OF BARNABAS. 123 

or investigating its applications, or even of increasing our 
knowledge of its contents, but of bringing our own souls 
mnre completely under its influence, and saturating our 
being with its fragrance. The Church has forgotten how 
to meditate. We are all so occupied arguing and dedu- 
cing and elaborating, that we have no time for retired still 
contemplation and, therefore, lose the finest aroma of the 
truth we profess to believe. Many of us are so busy 
thinking about Christianity that we have lost our hold of 
Christ. Sure I am that there are few things more needed 
by our modern Religion than the old exhortation, " Come, 
My people, enter into thy chambers and shut thy doors 
about thee." Cleave to the Lord by habitual play of 
meditative thought on the treasures hidden in His name, 
and waiting like gold in the quartz, to be the prize of our 
patient sifting and close gaze. 

And when the great truths embodied in Him stand 
clear before us, then let us remember that we have not 
done with them when we have seen them. Next must 
come into exercise the moral side of faith, the voluntary 
act of trust, the casting ourselves on Him whom we be- 
hold, the making our own of the blessings which He 
holds out to us. Flee to Christ as to our strong habita- 
tion to which we may continually resort Hold tightly 
by Christ with a grasp which nothing can slacken (that 
whitens your very knuckles as you clutch Him), lean on 
Christ all your weight and all your burdens. Cleave to 
the Lord with full purpose of heart 

Let us cleave to the Lord by constant outgoings ofmtr 
fan to Him. That is the bond which unites human 



124 THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS, [serm. 

spirits together in the only real union, and Scripture 
teaches us to see in the sweetest sacredest closest tie 
that men and women can know, a real though faint 
shadow of the far deeper and truer union between Christ 
and us. The same love which is the bond of perfectness 
between man and man, is the bond between us and 
Christ In no dreamy semi-pantheistic fusion of the 
believer with His Lord do we find the true conception of 
the unity of Christ and His Church, but in a union which 
preserves the individualities lest it should slay the love. 
Faith knits us to Christ, and faith is the mother of love, 
which maintains the blessed union. So let us not be 
ashamed of the emotional side of our religion, nor deem 
that we can cleave to Christ unless our hearts twine their 
tendrils round Him, and our love pours its odorous 
treasures on His sacred feet, not without weeping nor em- 
braces. Cold natures may carp, but Love is justified of 
her children, and Christ accepts the homage that has a 
heart in it Cleaving to the Lord is not merely love, 
but it is impossible without it The order is Faith, 
Love, Obedience, that threefold cord knits men to Christ, 
and Christ to men. For the understanding a continuous 
grasp of Him as the object of thought For the heart 
a continuous out-going to Him as the object of our love. 
For the will a continuous submission to Him as the 
Lord of our Obedience. For the whole nature a 
continuous cleaving to Him as the object of our faith 
and worship. 

Such is the true discipline of the Christian life. Such is 
the all-sufficient command; as for the newest convert 



v.] THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS. 125 

from heathenism, with little knowledge and the taint of 
his old vices in his soul, so for the saint fullest of wisdom 
and nearest the Light 

It is all-sufficient. If Barnabas had been like some of 
us, he would have had a very different style of exhorta- 
tion. He would have said, This irregular work has been 
well done, but there are no authorised teachers here, and 
no provision has been made for the due administration of 
the sacraments of the Church. The very first thing of all 
is to give these people the blessing of bishops and priests. 
Some of us would have said, A good work has been done, 
but these good people are terribly ignorant The best 
thing would be to get ready as soon as possible some 
manual of Christian doctrine, and in the meantime pro- 
vide for their systematic instruction in at least the 
elements of the faith. Some of us would have said, No 
doubt they have been converted, but we fear there has 
been too much of the emotional in the preaching. The 
moral side of Christianity has not been pressed home, 
and what they chiefly need is to be taught that it is not 
feeling but righteousness. Plain practical instruction in 
Christian duty is the one thing they want 

Barnabas knew better. He did not despise organi- 
sation, nor orthodoxy, nor practical righteousness, but he 
knew that all three, and everything else that any man 
needed for his perfecting, would come, if only they kept 
near to Christ, and that nothing else was of any use if 
they did not. That same conviction should for us 
settle the relative importance which we attach to these 
subordinate and derivative things, and to the primary 



1 26 THE EXHOR TA TION OF BARNABAS, [serm. 

and primitive duty. Obedience to it will secure them. 
They, without it, are not worth securing. 

We spend much pains and effort now-a-days in perfect- 
ing our organisations and consolidating our resources ; 
and I have not a word to say against that But heavier 
machinery needs more power in the engine, and that 
means greater capacity in your boilers and more fire in 
your furnace. The more complete our organisation, the 
more do we need a firm hold of Christ, or we shall be 
overweighted by it, shall be in danger of burning incense 
to our own net, shall be tempted to trust in drill rather 
than in courage, in mechanism rather than in the life 
drawn from Christ On the other hand, putting as our 
first care the preservation of the closeness of our union 
with Christ, that life will shape a body for itself, and to 
every seed its own body. 

True conceptions of Him, and a definite theology \ are good 
and needful. Let us cleave to Him with mind and heart, 
and we shall receive all the knowledge we need, and be 
guided into the deep things of God. In Him are hid all 
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and the basis of 
all theology is the personal possession of Him who is the 
wisdom of God, and the light of the world. Every one 
that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. Pectus 
facit Thcologutn. 

Plain straightforward morality, and every-day right- 
eousness are better than all emotion and all dogmatism 
and all churchism, says the world, and Christianity says 
much the same ; but plain straightforward righteousness 
and every-day morality come most surely when a man is 



T.] THE EXHORTA TION OF BARNABAS. 1*7 

keeping close to Christ In a word, everything that can 
adorn the character with beauty, and clothe the Church 
with glorious apparel, whatsoever things are lovely and of 
good report, all that the world or God call virtue and 
crown with praise, they are all in their fulness in Him, 
and all are most surely derived from Him by keeping 
fast hold of His hand, and preserving the channels clear 
through which His manifold grace may flow into our 
souls. The same life is strength in the arm, pliancy in the 
fingers, swiftness in the foot, light in the eye, music on 
the lips ; so the same grace is Protean in its forms, and to 
His servants who trust Him Christ ever says, " What would 
ye that I should do unto you ? Be it even as thou wilt" 
The same mysterious power lives in the swaying branch, 
and in the veined leaf, and in the blushing clusters. With 
like wondrous transformations of the one grace, the Lord 
pours Himself into our spirits, filling all needs and fitting 
for all circumstances. Therefore for us all, individuals 
and Churches, this remains the prime command, With 
purpose of heart cleave unto the Lord. Dear brethren, 
in the ministry how sorely we need this exhortation I Our 
very professional occupation with Christ and His truth is 
full of danger for us, we are so accustomed to handle 
these sacred themes as a means of instructing or impres- 
sing others that we get to regard them as our weapons, 
even if we do not degrade them still further by thinking of 
them as our stock-in-trade and means of oratorical effect 
We must keep very firm hold of Christ for ourselves by 
much solitary communion, and so retranslating into the 
nutriment of our own souls the message we bring to men, 



128 THE EXHORTATION OF BARNABAS, [serm. 

else when we have preached to others we ourselves may 
be cast away. All the ordinary tendencies which draw 
men from Him work on us, and a host of others peculiar 
to ourselves, and all around us run strong currents of 
thought which threaten to sweep many away. Let us 
tighten our grasp of Him in the face of modern doubt; 
and take heed to ourselves that neither vanity, nor world- 
liness, nor sloth ; neither the gravitation earthward common 
to all, nor the temptations proper to our office; neither 
unbelieving voices without nor voices within seduce us 
from His side. There only is our peace, there our wisdom, 
there our power. 

Subtly and silently the separating forces are ever at 
work upon us, and all unconsciously to ourselves our 
hold may relax and the flow of this grace into our spirits 
may cease, while yet we mechanically keep up the round of 
outward service, nor even suspect that our strength is 
departed from us. Many a stately elm that seems full of 
vigorous life, for all its spreading boughs and clouds of 
dancing leaves is hollow at the heart, and when the storm 
comes goes down with a crash, and men wonder as they 
look at the ruin, how such a mere shell of life with a core 
of corruption could stand so long. It rotted within and 
fell at last because its roots did not go deep down to 
the rich soil, where they would have found nourishment, 
but ran along near the surface among gravel and stones. 
If we would stand firm, be sound within, and bring forth 
much fruit, we must strike our roots deep in Him Who 
is the anchorage of our souls, and the nourisher of all 
our being. 



v.] THE EXHORT A TION OF BARNABAS. 129 

Hearken, beloved brethren, in this great work of the 
ministry, not to the exhortation of the servant, but to the 
solemn command of the Master, " Abide in Me, and I 
in you. As the branch cannot bear truit of itself, except 
it abide in the vine, no rrx>re can ye, except ye abide in 
Me." And let us, knowing our own weakness, take heed 
of the self-confidence that answers, " Though all should 
forsake Thee, yet will not I," and turn the vows, which 
spring to our lips into the lowly prayer " My soul cleaveth 
unto the dust, quicken Thou me according to Thy word." 
Then, thinking rather of His cleaving to us, than of our 
cleaving to Him, let us, resolutely, take as the motto of our 
lives the grand words : " I follow after if that I may lay 
hold of that, for which also I am laid hold of by Chr t 
Jesua,* 



SERMON VI. 

MEASURELESS POWER AND ENDLESS GLORY. 

Ephesians HI 20, 21. 

Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly abore all 
that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, 
Unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout 
all ages, world without end. Amen. 

/^"\NE purpose and blessing of faithful prayer is to en- 
^^ large the desires which it expresses, and to make 
us think more loftily of the grace to which we appeal. So 
the apostle, in the wonderful series of supplications which 
precedes the text, has found his thought of what he may 
hope for his brethren at Ephesus grow greater with every 
clause. His prayer rises like some songbird, in ever 
widening sweeps, each higher in the blue, and nearer the 
throne ; and at each a sweeter, fuller note. 

" Strengthened with might by His Spirit * ; " that Christ 
may dwell in your hearts by faith " ; " that ye may be 
able to know the love of Christ n ; " that ye might be filled 
with all the fulness of God. " Here he touches the very 
throne. Beyond that nothing can be conceived. But 
though that sublime petition may be the end of thought, 
it is not the end of faith. Though God can give us 



SERM. VL] MEASURELESS POWER. 131 

nothing more than it is, He can give us more than we 
think it to be, and more than we ask, when we ask this. 
Therefore the grand doxology of our text crowns and 
surpasses even this great prayer. The higher true prayer 
climbs, the wider is its view ; and the wider is its view, 
the more conscious is it that the horizon of its vision is 
far within the borders of the goodly land. And as we 
gaze into what we can discern of the fulness of God, 
prayer will melt into thanksgiving and the doxology for 
the swift answer will follow close upon the last words of 
supplication. So is it here : so it may be always. 

The form of our text, then, marks the confidence of 
Paul's prayer. The exuberant fervour of his faith, as 
well as his natural impetuosity and ardour, comes out 
in the heaped-up words expressive of immensity and 
duration. He is like some archer watching, with parted 
lips, the flight of his arrow to the mark. He is gazing on 
God confident that he has not asked in vain. Let us 
look with him, that we, too, may be heartened to expect 
great tilings of God. Notice, then — 

I. The Measure of the Power to which we trust 
This Epistle is remarkable for its frequent references 
to the Divine rule, or standard, or measure, in accor- 
dance with which the great facts of redemption take place. 
The "things on the earth"— the historical processes by 
which salvation is brought to men and works in men 
—are ever traced up to the " things in heaven j " the 
Divine counsels from which they have come forth. 
That phrase* " according to," is perpetually occurring in 



132 MEASURELESS POWER AND [skrm,, 

this connection in the Epistle. It is applied mainly in 
two directions. It serves sometimes to bring into view 
the ground, or reason, of the redemptive facts, as, foi 
instance, in the expression that these take place " ac 
cording to His good pleasure which He hath purposed 
in Himselt It serves sometimes to bring into view 
the measure by which the working of these redemptive 
facts is determined ; as in our text, and in many other 
places. 

Now there are three main forms under which this 
standard, or measure, of the Redeeming Power is set forth 
in this Epistle, and it will help us to grasp the greatness 
of the apostle's thought if we consider these. 

Take, then, first, that clause in the earlier portion of 
the preceding prayer, " that He would grant you accor- 
ding to the riches of His glory? The measure, then, of 
the gift that we may hope to receive is the measure of 
God's own fulness. The " riches of His glory " can be 
nothing less than the whole uncounted abundance of that 
majestic and far-shining Nature, as it pours itself forth in 
the dazzling perfectn esses of its own Self-manifestation. 
And nothing less than this great treasure is to be the 
limit and standard of His gift to us. We are the sons of 
the King, and the allowance which He makes us even 
before we come to our inheritance is proportionate to 
our Father's wealth. The same stupendous thought is 
given us in that prayer, heavy with the blessed weight 
of unspeakable gifts, " that ye might be filled with all the 
fulness of God"; this, then, is the measure of the grace 
that we may possess. This limitless limit alone bounds 



VI.] ENDLESS GLORY. 133 

the possibilities for every man, the certainties for every 
Christian. 

The effect must be proportioned to the cause. And 
what effect will be adequate as the outcome of such a 
cause as " the riches of His glory " ? Nothing short of 
absolute perfectness, the full transmutation of our dark, 
cold being into the reflected image of His own burning 
brightness, the ceaseless replenishing of our own spirits with 
all graces and gladnesses akin to His, the eternal growth 
of the soul upward and God ward. Perfection is the sign- 
manual of God in all His works, just as imperfection and 
the falling below our thought and wish is our " token in 
every Epistle " and deed of ours. Take the finest needle, 
and put it below a microscope, and it will be all ragged 
and irregular, the fine, tapering lines will be broken by 
many a bulge and bend, and the point blunt and clumsy. 
Put the blade of grass to the same test, and see how true 
its outline, how delicate and true the spear-head of its 
point God's work is perfect, man's is clumsy and in- 
complete. God does not leave off till He has finished. 
When He rests, it is because, looking on His work, He 
sees it all " very good." His Sabbath is the Sabbath of 
an achieved purpose, of a fulfilled counsel The palaces 
which we build are ever like that in the story, where one 
window remains dark and unjewelled, while the rest blaze 
'n beauty. But when God builds, none can say, "He 
was not able to finish." In His great palace He makes 
her " windows of agates * and all her " borders of pleasant 
stones." 

So we have a right to enlarge our desires and stretch 



134 MEASURELESS POWER AND [serm. 

our confidence of what we may possess and become to 
this, His boundless bound : " The riches of glory." 

But another form in which the standard, or measure, 
is stated in this letter is : " The working of His mighty 
Power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised 
Him from the dead " (L 19, 20) ; or, as it i» put with a 
modification, " grace according to the measure of the gift 
of Christ w (iv. 7). That is to say, we have not only the 
whole riches of the Divine glory as the measure to which 
we may lift our hopes, but lest that celestial brightness 
should seem too high above us, and too far from us, we 
have Christ in His Human-Divine manifestation, and 
especially in the great fact of the resurrection, set before 
us, that by Him we may learn what God wills we should 
become. The former phase of the standard may sound 
abstract, cloudy, hard to connect with any definite antici- 
pations ; and so this form of it is concrete, historical, and 
gives human features to the fair ideal. His resurrection 
is the high-water-mark of the Divine power, and to the 
same level it will rise again in regard to every Christian. 
That Lord, in the glory of His risen life, and in the 
riches of the gifts which He received when He ascended 
up on high, is the pattern for us, and the power which 
fulfils its own pattern. In Him we see what man may 
become, and what His followers must become. The 
limits of that power will not be reached until every 
Christian soul is perfectly assimilated to that likeness, 
and bears all its beauty in his face, nor till every Chris- 
tian soul is raised to participation in Christ's dignity and 
sits on His throne. Then, and not till then, shall the 



vi.] ENDLESS GLORY. 135 

purpose of God be fulfilled and the gift which is measured 
by the riches of the Father's glory, and the fulness of the 
Son's grace, be possessed or conceived in its measureless 
measure. 

But there is a third form in which this same standard 
is represented. That is the form which is found in our 
text, and in other places of the Epistle : " According to 
the Power that worketh in us" 

What power is that but the power of the Spirit of God 
dwelling in us ? And thus we have the measure, or stand- 
ard, set forth in terms respectively applying to the Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost For the first, the riches 
of His glory; for the secc nd, His resurrection and ascen- 
sion ; for the third, His energy working in Christian souls. 
The first, carries us up into the mysteries of God, where 
the air is almost too subtle for our gross lungs ; the second 
draws nearer to earth and points us to an historical 
fact that happened in this every-day world ; the third, 
comes still nearer to us, and bids us look within, and see 
whether what we are conscious of there, if we interpret 
it by the light of these other measures, will not yield 
results as great as theirs, and open before us the same 
fair prospect of perfect holiness and conformity to the 
Divine nature. 

There is already a Power at work within us, if we be 
Christians, of whose workings we may be aware, and from 
them forecast the measure of the gifts which it can be- 
stow upon us. We may estimate what will be by what 
we know has been, and by what we feel is. That is to 
say, in other words, the effects already produced, and the 



136 MEASURELESS POWER AND [serm. 

experiences we have already had, cany in them the 
pledge of completeness. 

I suppose that if the mediaeval dream had ever come 
true, and an alchemist had ever turned a grain of lead 
into gold, he could have turned all the lead in the world 
in time, and with crucibles and furnaces enough. The 
first step is all the difficulty, and if you and I have been 
changed from enemies into sons, and had one spark of 
love to God kindled in our hearts, that is a mightiei 
change than any that remains to be effected in order to 
make us perfect One grain has been changed, the 
whole mass will be in due time. 

The present operations of that power cany in them the 
pledge of their own completion. The strange mingling 
of good and evil in our present nature, our aspirations so 
crossed and contradicted, our resolution so broken and 
falsified, the gleams of light, and the eclipses that follow 
— all these, in their opposition to each other, are plainly 
transitory, and the workings of that Power within us, 
though they be often overborne, are as plainly the stronger 
in their nature, and meant to conquer and to endure. 
Like some half-hewn block, such as travellers find in long 
abandoned quarries whence Egyptian temples, that were 
destined never to be completed, were built, our spirits are 
but partly " polished after the similitude of a palace, " 
while much remains in the rough. The builders of these 
temples have mouldered away, and their unfinished handi- 
work will lie as it was when the last chisel touched it 
centuries ago, till the crack of doom ; but stones for God's 
temple will be wrought to completeness and set in their 



vl] ENDLESS GLORY. 137 

places. The whole threefold Divine cause of our sal- 
vation supplies the measure, and lays the foundation for 
our hopes, in the glory of the Father, the grace of the 
Son, the power of the Holy Ghost Let us lift up our 
cry: "Perfect that which concerneth me, forsake not 
the works of Thine own hands," and we shall have for 
answer the ancient word, fresh as when it sounded long 
ago from among the stars to the sleeper at the ladder's 
foot," I will not leave thee, until I have done that which 
I have spoken to thee oiP 

IL Notice the relation of the Divine Working to our 
thoughts and desires. 

Hie apostle in his fervid way strains language to ex- 
press how far the possibility of the Divine working ex- 
tends. He is able, not only to do all things, but " beyond 
all things" — a vehement way of putting the boundless 
reach of that gracious power. And what he means by 
this "beyond all things" is more fully expressed in 
the next words, in which he labours by accumulating 
synonyms to convey his sense of the transcendent energy 
which waits to bless : " exceeding abundantly above what 
we ask. " And as, alas I our desires are but shrunken 
and narrow beside our thoughts, he sweeps a wider orbit 
when he adds " above what we think. " He has been 
asking wonderful things, and yet even his farthest-reach- 
ing petitions fall far on this side of the greatness of God's 
power. One might think that even it could go no further 
than filling us " with all the fulness of God." Nor can 
it ; but it may far transcend our conceptions of what 



138 MEASURELESS POWER AND [serm. 

that is, and astonish us by its surpassing our thoughts, no 
less than it shames us by exceeding our prayers. 

Of course, all this is true, and is meant to apply, only 
about the inward gifts of God's grace. I need not re- 
mind you that, in the outer world of Providence and 
earthly gifts, prayers and wishes often surpass the answers ; 
that there a deeper wisdom often contradicts our thoughts 
and a truer kindness refuses our petitions, and that so the 
rapturous words of our text are only true in a very modi- 
fied and partial sense about God's working /#r us in the 
world. It is His work in us concerning which they are 
absolutely true. 

Of course, we know that in all regions of His working 
He is able to surpass our poor human conceptions, and 
that, properly speaking, the most familiar, and, as we 
insolently call them, " smallest " of His works holds in it 
a mystery — were it none other than the mystery of Being 
— against which Thought has been breaking its teeth ever 
since men began to think at all. 

But as regards the working of God on our spiritual 
lives, this passing beyond the bounds of thought and 
desire is but the necessary result of the fact already dealt 
with, that the only measure of the power is God Himself, 
in that Threefold Being. That being so, no plummet of 
our making can reach to the bottom of the abyss, no 
strong-winged thought can fly to the outermost bound of 
the encircling heaven. Widely as we stretch our reverent 
conceptions, there is ever something beyond. After we 
have resolved many a dim white cloud in the starry sky, 
and found it all ablaze with suns and worlds, there will 



VL] ENDLESS GLORY. 139 

still hang, faint and far before us, hazy magnificences 
which we have not apprehended. Confidently and boldly 
as we may offer our prayers and largely as we may expect, 
the answer is ever more than the petition. For in- 
deed, in every act of His quickening grace, in every God- 
given increase of our knowledge of God, in every bestow- 
ment of His fulness, there is always more bestowed than 
we receive, more than we know even while we possess it 
Like some gift given in the dark, its true preciousness is 
not discerned when it is first received. The gleam of the 
gold does not strike our eye all at once. There is ever 
an unknown margin felt by us to be over after our capa- 
city of receiving is exhausted. " And they took up of 
the fragments that remained, twelve baskets fulL* 

So, then, let us remember that while our thoughts and 
prayers can never reach to the full perception, or recep- 
tion either, of the gift, the exuberant amplitude with which 
it reaches far beyond both is meant to draw both after it 
And let us not forget either that, while the grace which 
we receive has no limit or measure but the fulness of God, 
the working limit, which determines what we receive of 
the grace, is these very thoughts and wishes which it sur* 
passes. We may have as much of God as we can hold, 
as much as we wish. All Niagara may roar past a man's 
door, but only as much as he diverts through his own 
sluice will drive his mill, or quench his thirst. That grace 
is like the figures in the Eastern tales, that will creep into 
a narrow room no bigger than a nutshell, or will tower 
heaven high. Our spirits are like the magic tent whose 
walls expanded or contracted at the owner's wish — we 



140 MEASURELESS POWER AND [sum. 

may enlarge them to enclose far more of the grace than 
we have ever possessed. We are not straitened in God, 
but in ourselves. He is " able to do exceeding abun- 
dantly above what we ask or think." Therefore let us 
stretch desires and thoughts to their utmost, remember- 
ing that while they can never reach the measure of His 
grace in itself, they make the practical measure of our 
possession of it. " According to thy faith, " is a real 
measure of the gift received, even though " according to 
the riches of His glory " be the measure of the gift 
bestowed. Note, again. 

IIL The Glory that springs from the Divine Work. 

m The glory of God " is the lustre of His own perfect 
character the bright sum total of all the blended brilliancies 
that compose His name. When that light is welcomed 
and adored by men, they are said to " give glory to God " 
and this doxology is at once a prophecy that the work- 
ing of Gods power on His redeemed children will issue 
in setting forth the radiance of His name yet more, and a 
prayer that it may. So we have here the great thought 
expressed in many places of Scripture, that the highest 
exhibition of the Divine character for the reverence and 
love — of the whole universe, shall we say ? — lies in His 
work on Christian souls, and the effect produced thereby 
on them. God takes His stand, so to speak, on this 
great fact in His dealings, and will have His creatures 
estimate Him by it He reckons it His highest praise 
that He has redeemed men, and by His dwelling in them, 
fills them with His own fulness. And this chiefest praise 



VI.] ENDLESS GLORY. 141 

and brightest glory accrues to Him " in the Church in 
Christ Jesus." The weakening of the latter words into 
" by Christ Jesus, " as in the English version, is to be 
regretted, as substituting another thought, Scriptural no 
doubt and precious, for the precise shade of meaning ; n 
the apostle's mind here. As has been well said, " the first, 
words denote the outward province ; the second, the in- 
ward and spiritual sphere in which God was to be praised." 
His glory is to shine in the Church, the theatre of His 
power, the standing demonstration of the might of re- 
deeming love. By this He will be judged, and this He 
will point to if any ask what is His Divinest work, which 
bears the clearest imprint of His Divinest sel£ His glory 
is to be set forth by men on condition that they are " in 
Christ," living and moving in Him, in that mysterious 
but most real union without which no fruit grows on the 
dead branches, nor any music of praise breaks from dead 
lips. 

So, then, think of that wonder that God sets His glory 
in His dealings with us. Amid all the majesty of His 
works and all the blaze of His creation, this is what He 
presents as the highest specimen of His power — the 
Church of Jesus Christ, the company of poor men, wearied 
and conscious of many evils, who follow afar off the foot- 
steps of their Lord. How dusty and toil-worn the little 
group of Christians that landed at Puteoli must have 
looked as they toiled along the Appian Way and entered 
Rome ! How contemptuously emperor and philosopher 
and priest and patrician would have curled their Mps, 
if they had been told that in that little knot of Jewish 



142 MEASURELESS POWER AND [serm. 

prisoners lay a power before which theirs would cower and 
finally fade ! Even so is it still. Among all the splend- 
ours of this great universe, and the mere obtrusive taw 
drinesses of earth, men look upon us Christians as poor 
enough ; and yet it is to His redeemed children that God 
has entrusted His praise, and in their hands He has 
lodged the sacred deposit of His own glory. 

Think loftily of that office and honour, lowly of your- 
selves who have it laid upon you as a crown. His 
honour is in our hands. We are the " secretaries of His 
praise." This is the highest function that any creature 
can discharge. The Rabbis have a beautiful bit of 
teaching buried among their rubbish about angels. They 
say that there are two kinds of angels: the angels of 
service and the angels of praise, of which two orders the 
latter is the higher, and that no angel in it praises God 
twice, but having once lifted up his voice in the psalm of 
heaven, then perishes and ceases to be. He has per- 
fected his being, he has reached the height of his great- 
ness, he has done what he was made for, let him fade 
away. The garb of legend is mean enough, but the 
thought it embodies is that ever true and solemn one, 
without which life is nought : " Man's chief end is to 
glorify God." 

And we can only fulfil that high purpose in the 
measure of our union with Christ. " In Him " abiding, 
we manifest God's glory, for in Him abiding we receive 
God's grace. So long as we are joined to Him, we 
partake of His life, and our lives become music and 
praise. The electric current flows from Him through all 



vs.] ENDLESS GLORY. 143 

souls that are " in Him," and they glow with fair colours 
which they owe to their contact with Jesus. Interrupt 
the communication, and all is darkness. So, brethren, 
let us seek to abide in Him, severed from Whom we are 
nothing. Then shall we fulfil the purpose of His love, 
Who " hath shined in our hearts," that we might give to 
others " the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
in the face of Jesus Christ" Notice, lastly, 

IV. The Eternity of the Work and of the Praise. 

As in the former clauses, the idea of the transcendent 
greatness of the power of God was expressed by accu- 
mulated synonyms, so here the kindred thought of its 
eternity, and consequently of the ceaseless duration of 
the resulting glory, is sought to be set forth by a similar 
aggregation. The language creaks and labours, as it 
were, under the weight of the great conception. Lite- 
rally rendered, the words are — " to all generations of the 
age of the ages " — a remarkable fusing together of two 
expressions for unbounded duration, which are scarcely 
congruous. We can understand " to all generations " as 
expressive of duration as long as birth and death shall 
last We can understand "the age of the ages" as 
pointing to that endless epoch whose moments are 
"ages "; but the blending of the two is but an uncon- 
scious acknowledgment that the speech of earth, saturated, 
as it is, with the colouring of time, bieaks down in the 
attempt to express the thought of eternity. Undoubtedly 
that solemn conception is the one intended by this 
strange phrase. 



144 MEASURELESS POWER. (serm. vl 

The work is to go on for ever and ever, and with it 
the praise. As the ages which are the beats of the 
pendulum of eternity come and go, more and more of 
God's power will flow out to us, and more and more of 
God's glory will be manifested in us. It must be so. 
For God's gift is infinite, and man's capacity of reception 
is indefinitely capable of increase. Therefore eternity 
will be needful in order that redeemed souls may absorb 
all of God which He can give or they can take. The 
process has no limits, for there is no bound to be set to 
the possible approaches of the human spirit to the Divine, 
and none to the exuberant abundance of the beauty and 
glory which God will give to His child Therefore we 
shall live for ever : and for ever show forth His praise and 
blaze out like the sun with the irradiation of His glory. 
We cannot die till we have exhausted God. Till we 
comprehend all His nature in our thoughts, and reflect all 
His beauty in our character ; till we have attained all the 
bliss that we can think, and received all the good that 
we can ask; till Hope has nothing before her to reach 
towards, and God is left behind : we " shall not die, but 
live, and declare the works of the Lord." 

Let His grace work on you, and yield yourselves to 
Him, that His fulness may fill your emptiness. So on 
earth we shall be delivered from hopes which mock, and 
wishes that are never fulfilled. So in heaven, after 
" ages of ages " of growing glory, we shall have to say, as 
each new wave of the shoreless, sunlit sea bears us 
onward, " It doth not yet appear what we shall b« ** 



SERMON VII. 

LOVE'S TRIUMPH. 

Romans viii. 38, 39. 

Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, 
nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, 
nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the lore 
of God. 

THHESE rapturous words are the climax of the apostle's 
A long demonstration that the Gospel is the revela- 
tion of " the righteousness of God from faith to faith," 
and is thereby " the power of God unto salvation." What 
a contrast there is between the beginning and the end of 
his argument ! It started with sombre, sad words about 
man's sinfiilness and aversion from the knowledge of God. 
It closes with this sunny outburst of triumph ; like some 
stream rising among black and barren cliffs, or melancholy 
moorlands, and foaming through narrow rifts in gloomy 
ravines, it reaches at last fertile lands, and flows calm, the 
sunlight dancing on its broad surface, till it loses itself at 
last in the unfathomable ocean of the love of God. 

We are told that the Biblical view of human nature is 
too dart Well, the important question is not whether it 
be dark, but whether it be true. But, apart from that, 

L 



146 LOVE'S TRIUMPH. [serm. 

the doctrine of Scripture about man's moral condition is 
not dark, if you will take the whole of it together. 
Certainly, a part of it is very dark. The picture, for 
instance, of what men are, painted at the beginning of 
this Epistle, is black like a canvas of Rembrandt's. The 
Bible is " Nature's sternest painter but her best." But 
to get the whole doctrine of Scripture on the subject, we 
have to take its confidence as to what men may become, 
as well as its portrait of what they are— and then who 
will say that the anthropology of Scripture is gloomy ? 
To me it seems that the unrelieved blackness of the view 
which, because it admits no fall, can imagine no rise, 
which sees in all man's sins and sorrows no token of the 
dominion of an alien power, and has, therefore, no reason 
to believe that they can be separated from humanity, is 
the true " Gospel of despair," and that the system which 
looks steadily at all the misery and all the wickedness, 
and calmly proposes to cast it all out, is really the only 
doctrine of human nature which throws any gleam of 
light on the darkness. Christianity begins indeed with, 
" There is none that doeth good, no, not one," but it 
ends with this victorious paean of our text 

And what a majestic close it is to the great words that 
have gone before, fitly crowning even their lofty height 1 
One might well shrink from presuming to take such words 
as a text, with any idea of exhausting or of enhancing 
them. My object is very much more humble. I simply 
wish to bring out the remarkable order, in which Paul 
here marshals, in his passionate, rhetorical amplification, 
all the enemies that can be supposed to seek to wrench 



VII.] LOVE'S TRIUMPH. 147 

us away from the love of God ; and triumphs over them 
alL We shall best measure the fulness of the words by 
simply taking these clauses as they stand in the text 

I. The love of God is unaffected ly the cxtretnest 
changes of our condition. 

The apostle begins his fervid catalogue of vanquished 
foes by a pair of opposites which might seem to cover 
the whole ground—" neither death nor life." What more 
can be said? Surely, these two include everything. 
From one point of view they do. But yet, as we shall 
see, there is more to be said. And the special reason for 
beginning with this pair of possible enemies is probably 
to be found by remembering that they are a pair, that 
between them they do cover the whole ground, and 
represent the extremes of change which can befall us. 
The one stands at the one pole, the other at the other. 
If these two stations, so far from each other, are equally 
near to God's love, then no intermediate point can be far 
from it. If the most violent change which we can ex- 
perience does not in the least matter to the grasp which 
the love of God has on us, or to the grasp which we 
may have on it, then no less violent a change can be of 
any consequence. It is the same thought in a somewhat 
modified form, as we find in another word of Paul's 
u Whether we live, we live unto the Lord ; and whether 
we die, we die unto the Lord." Our subordination to 
Him is the same, and our consecration should be the 
same in all varieties of condition, even in that greatest 
of all variations. His love to us makes no account of 

L 2 



148 LOVE'S TRIUMPH. [SKRM. 

that mightiest of changes. How should it be affected by 
slighter ones ? 

The distance of a star is measured by the apparent 
change in its position, as seen from different points of the 
earth's surface or orbit But this great Light stands 
steadfast in our heaven, nor moves a hair's breadth, nor 
pours a feebler ray on us, whether we look up to it from 
the midsummer day of busy life, or from the midwinter 
of death. These opposites are parted by a distance to 
which the millions of miles of the world's path among the 
stars are but a point, and yet the love of God streams 
down on them alike. 

Of course, the confidence of immortality is implied in 
this thought Death does not, in the slightest degree, 
affect the essential vitality of the soul ; so it does not, in 
the slightest degree, affect the outflow of God's love to 
that souL It is a change of condition and circumstance, 
and no more. He does not lose us in the dust of death. 
The withered leaves on the pathway are trampled into 
mud, and indistinguishable to human eyes ; but He sees 
them even as when they hung green and sunlit on the 
mystic tree of life. 

How beautifully this thought contrasts with the saddest 
aspect of the power of death in our human experience ! 
He is Death the Separater, who unclasps our hands from 
the closest, dearest grasp, and divides asunder joints and 
marrow, and parts soul and body, and withdraws us from 
all our habitude and associations and occupations, and 
loosens every bond of society and concord, and hales us 
away into a lonely land. But there is one bond which 



m] LOVE'S TRIUMPH. 149 

his " abhorred shears " cannot cut Their edge is turned 
on //. One Hand holds us in a grasp which the fleshless 
fingers of Death in vain strive to loosen. The separater 
becomes the uniter ; he rends us apart from the world 
that he may " bring us to God." The love filtered by 
drops on us in life is poured upon us in a flood in death ; 
" for I am persuaded, that neither death nor life shall be 
able to separate us from the love of God.* 

IL The love of God is undiverted from us by any other 

order of beings. 

" Nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers," says Paul 
Here we pass from conditions affecting ourselves to living 
beings beyond ourselves. Now, it is important for under- 
standing the precise thought of the apostle to observe that 
this expression, when used without any qualifying adjec- 
tive, seems uniformly to mean good angels, the hierarchy 
of blessed spirits before the throne. So that there is no 
reference to " spiritual wickedness in high places" striving 
to draw men away from God. The supposition which 
the apostle makes is, indeed, an impossible one, that 
these ministering spirits, who are sent forth to minister 
to them who shall be heirs of salvation, should so forget 
their mission and contradict their nature as to seek to bar 
us out from the love which it is their chiefest joy to bring 
to us. He knows it to be an impossible supposition, and 
its very impossibility gives energy to his conclusion, just 
as when in the same fashion he makes the other equally 
impossible supposition about an angel from heaven 



150 LOVE'S TRIUMPH. [serm. 

preaching another gospel than that which he had 
preached to them. 

So we may turn the general thought of this second 
category of impotent efforts in two different ways, and 
suggest, first, that it implies the utter powerlessness of 
any third party in regard to the relations between our 
souls and God 

We alone have to do with Him alone. The awful fact 
of individuality, that solemn mystery of our personal 
Being, has its most blessed or its most dread manifes- 
tation in our relation to God. There no other Being has 
any power. Counsel and stimulus, suggestion or tempt- 
ation, instruction or lies, which may tend to lead us 
nearer to Him or away from Him, they may indeed give 
us ; but after they have done their best or their worst, all 
depends on the personal act of our own innermost being. 
Man nor angel can affect that, but from without The 
old mystics called prayer " the flight of the lonely soul to 
the only God." It is the name for all religion. These 
two, God and the soul, have to "transact," as our 
Puritan forefathers used to say, as if there were no 
other beings in the universe but only they two. Angels 
and principalities and powers may stand beholding 
with sympathetic joy; they may minister blessing and 
guardianship in many ways; but the decisive act of 
union between God and the soul they can neither effect 
nor prevent 

And as for them, so for men around us ; the limits of 
their power to harm us are soon set They may shut us 
out from human love by calumnies, and dig deep gulfs of 



VII.] LOVE'S TRIUMPH. 151 

alienation between us and dear ones ; they may hurt and 
annoy us in a thousand ways with slanderous tongues, 
and arrows dipped in poisonous hatred But one thing 
they cannot do. They may build a wall around us, and 
imprison us from many a joy and many a fair prospect. 
But they cannot put a roof on it to keep out the sweet 
influences from above, or hinder us from looking up to 
the heavens. Nobody can come between us and God 
but ourselves. 

Or, we may turn this general thought in another 
direction, and say, These blessed spirits around the throne 
do not absorb and intercept His love. They gather 
about its steps in their " solemn troops and sweet 
societies f but close as are their ranks, and innumerable 
as is their multitude, they do not prevent that love from 
passing beyond them to us on the outskirts of the crowd. 
The planet nearest the sun is drenched and saturated with 
fiery brightness, but the rays from the centre of life pass 
on to each of the sister spheres in its turn, and travel 
away outwards to where the remotest of them all rolls in 
its far-off orbit, unknown for millenniums to dwellers closer 
to the sun, but through all the ages visited by warmth and 
light according to its needs. Like that poor sickly 
woman who could lay her wasted fingers on the hem of 
Christ's garment, notwithstanding the thronging multitude, 
we can reach our hands through all the crowd, or rather 
He reaches His strong hand to us and heals and blesses us. 
All the guests are fed full at that great table. One's gain 
is not another's loss. The multitudes sit on the green 
grassland the last man of the last fifty gets as much as 



153 LOVE'S TRIUMPH. [serm, 

the first : " They did all eat, and were filled n ; and more 
remains than fed them all. 

So all beings are " nourished from the King's country" 
and none jostle others out of their share. This healing 
fountain is not exhausted of its curative power by the 
early comers. " I will give unto this last, even as unto 
thee." " Nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, shall 
be able to separate us from the love of God." 

III. The love of God is raised above the power of Time. 

"Nor things present, nor things to come," is the 
apostle's next class of powers impotent to disunite as 
from the love of God. The rhythmical arrangement of 
the text deserves to be noticed, as bearing not only on 
its music and rhetorical flow, but as affecting its force. 
We had first a pair of opposites, and then a triplet ; u death 
and life : angels, principalities, and powers." We have 
again a pair of opposites; u things present, things to 
come," again followed by a triplet, " height nor depth, 
nor any other creature." The effect of this is to divide 
the whole into two, and to throw the first and second 
classes more closely together, as also the third and fourth. 
Time and Space, these two mysterious ideas, which work 
so fatally on all human love, art powerless here. 

The great Revelation of God, on which the whole of 
Judaism was built, was that made to Moses of the name 
" I Am that I Am." And parallel to the verbal revela- 
tion was that symbol of the Bush, burning and uncon- 
sumed, which is so often misunderstood. It appears 
wholly contrary to the usage of Scriptural visions, which 



VII.] LOVE'S TRIUMPH. 153 

are ever wont to express in material form the same truth 
which accompanies them in words, that the meaning of 
that vision should be, as it frequently taken as being, the 
continuance of Israel, unharmed by the fiery furnace of 
persecution. Not the continuance of Israel, but the 
eternity of Israel's God is the teaching of that flaming 
wonder. The burning Bush and the Name of the Lord 
proclaimed the same great truth of self-derived, self-deter- 
mined, timeless, undecaying Being. And what better sym- 
bol than the bush burning, and yet not burning out, could 
be found of that God in Whose life there is no tendency 
to death, Whose work digs no pit of weariness into which 
it falls, Who gives and is none the poorer, Who fears no 
exhaustion in His spending, no extinction in His continual 
shining ? 

And this eternity of Being is no mere metaphysical 
abstraction. It is eternity of love, for God is love. That 
great stream, the pouring out of His own very inmost 
Being, knows no pause, nor does the deep fountain from 
which it flows ever sink one hair's breadth in its pure basin. 

We know of earthly loves which cannot die. They 
have entered so deeply into the very fabric of the soul, 
that like some cloth dyed in grain, as long as two threads 
hold together they will retain the tint. We have to 
thank God for such instances of love stronger than death, 
which make it easier for us to believe in the unchanging 
duration of His. But we know, too, of love that can 
change, and we know that all love must part Few of us 
have reached middle life, who do not, looking back, see 
our track strewed with the gaunt skeletons of dead friend- 



154 LOVE'S TRIUMPH. [serm. 

ships, and dotted with " oaks of weeping," waving green 
and mournful over graves, and saddened by footprints 
striking away from the line of march, and leaving us the 
more solitary for their departure. 

How blessed then to know of a love which cannot 
change or die! The past, the present and the future 
are all the same to Him, to Whom " a thousand years," 
that can corrode so much of earthly love, are in their 
power to change " as one day," and " one day," which can 
hold so few of the expressions of our love, may be " as a 
thousand years " in the multitude and richness of the gifts 
which it can be expanded to contain. The whole of 
what He has been to any past, He is to us to-day. " The 
God of Jacob is our refuge." All these old-world stories 
of loving care and guidance may be repeated in our lives. 

So we may bring the blessedness of all the past into 
the present, and calmly face the misty future, sure that 
it cannot rob us of His love. 

"Do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, 
To this wide world and all her fading sweets," 

it matters not, if only our hearts are stayed on His love, 
which neither things present, nor things to come, can alter 
or remove. Looking on all the flow of ceaseless change, 
the waste and fading, the alienation and cooling, the de- 
crepitude and decay of earthly affection, we can lift up 
with gladness, heightened by the contrast, the triumphant 
song of the ancient Church : " Oh, give thanks unto the 
Lord : for He is good : because His mercy endureth for 
evert* 



VII.] LOVE'S TRIUMPH. 155 

IV. The love of God \% present everywhere* 

The apostle ends his catalogue with a singular trio of 
antagonists ; u nor height, nor depth, nor any other crea- 
ture," as if he had got impatient of the enumeration of 
impotencies, and having named the outside boundaries in 
space of the created universe, flings, as it were, with one 
rapid toss, into that large room the whole that it can 
contain, and triumphs over it all. 

As the former clause proclaimed the powerlessness of 
Time, so this proclaims the powerlessness of that other 
great mystery of creatural life which we call Space. 
Height or depth, it matters not. That diffusive love 
diffuses itself equally in all directions. Up or down, it 
is all the same. The distance from the centre is equal to 
Zenith or to Nadir. 

Here, we have the same process applied to that idea of 
Omnipresence as was applied in the former clause to 
the idea of Eternity. That thought, so hard to grasp 
with vividness, and not altogether a glad one to a sinful 
soul, is all softened and glorified, as some solemn Alpine 
cliff of bare rock is when the tender morning light glows 
on it, when it is thought of as the Omnipresence of Love. 
" Thou, God, seest me," may be a stern word, if the God 
Who sees be but a mighty Maker or a righteous Judge. 
As reasonably might we expect a prisoner in his solitary 
cell to be glad when he thinks that the jailer's eye is on 
him from some unseen spy-hole in the wall, as expect 
any thought of God but one to make a man read that 
grand one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm with joy : " If 



i*6 LOVE'S TRIUMPH. [serm. 

I ascend into heaven, Thou art there ; if I make my bed 
in Sheol, behold, Thou art there." So may a man say 
shudderingly to himself, and tremble as he asks in vain, 
" Whither shall I flee from Thy Presence?" But how 
different it all is when we can cast over the marble white- 
ness of that solemn thought the warm hue of life, and 
change the form of our words into this of our text : " Nor 
height, nor depth, shall be able to separate us from the 
love of God." 

In that great ocean of the Divine love we live and 
move and have our being, floating in it like some sea 
flower which spreads its filmy beauty and waves its long 
tresses in the depths of mid-ocean. The sound of its 
waters is ever in our ears, and above, beneath, around 
us, its mighty currents run evermore. We need not 
cower before the fixed gaze of some stony god, looking 
on us unmoved like those Egyptian deities that sit pitiless 
with idle hands on their laps, and wide-open lidless eyes 
gazing out across the sands. We need not fear the 
Omnipresence of Love, nor the Omniscience which 
knows us altogether, and loves us even as it knows. 
Rather we shall be glad that we are ever in His 
Presence, and desire, as the height of all felicity and the 
power for all goodness, to walk all the day long in the 
light of His countenance, till the day come when we 
shall receive the crown of our perfecting in that we shall 
be " ever with the Lord." 

The recognition of this triumphant sovereignty of love 
over all these real and supposed antagonists makes us, 
too, lords over them, and delivers us from the tempta- 



vii.] LOVE'S TRIUMPH. 157 

tions which some of them present us to separate our- 
selves from the love of God. They all become our 
servants and helpers, uniting us to that love. So we are 
set free from the dread of death and from the distrac- 
tions incident to life. So we are delivered from super- 
stitious dread of an unseen world, and from craven fear 
of men. So we are emancipated from absorption in the 
present and from careful thought for the future. So we 
are at home everywhere, and every corner of the universe 
is to us one of the many mansions of our Father's house. 
"All things are yours, . . . and ye are Christ's; and 
Christ is God's." 

I do not forget the closing words of this great text I 
have not ventured to include them in our present 
subject, because they would have introduced another 
wide region of thought to be laid down on our already 
too narrow canvas. 

But remember, I beseech you, that this love of God is 
explained by our apostle to be "in Christ Jesus our 
Lord." Love illimitable, all-pervasive, eternal; yes, but 
a love which has a channel and a course ; love which 
has a method and a process by which it pours itself over 
the world. It is not, as some representations would 
make it, a vague, nebulous light diffused through space 
as in a chaotic, half-made universe, but all gathered in 
that great Light which rules the day — even in Him Who 
said : " I am the Light of the World." In Christ the 
love of God is all centred and embodied, that it may be 
imparted to all sinful and hungry hearts, even as burning 
coals are gathered on a hearth that they may give warmth 



i$8 LOVE'S TRIUMPH. [serm. vil 

to all that are in the house. " God so loved the world" 
*-not merely so much y but in such a fashion — " that" — 
«hat what ? Many people would leap at once from the 
first to the last clause of the verse, and regard eternal 
life for all and sundry as the only adequate expression of 
the universal love of God. Not so does Christ speak. 
Between that universal love and its ultimate purpose and 
desire for every man He inserts two conditions, one on 
God's part, one on man's. God's love reaches its end, 
namely, the bestowal of eternal life, by means of a Divine 
act and a human response. " God so loved the world, 
that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
life." So all the universal love of God for you and me 
and for all our brethren is " in Christ Jesus our Lord," 
and faith in Him unites us to it by bonds which no foe 
can break, no shock of change can snap, no time can 
rot, no distance can stretch to breaking. " For I am 
persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor 
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things 
to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, 
shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which 
Is in Christ Jesus our Lord" 



SERMON VIII. 

JTHS GRAVE OF THE DEAD JOHN AND THE GRAY! 

OF THE LIVING JESUS. 

St. Matthew xiv. is. 

And John's disciples came, and took up the body, and buried 
it, and went and told Jesus. 

St. Matthew xxviii. 8. 

And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with 
fear and great joy. 

HP HERE is a remarkable parallel and still more re- 
■*■ markable contrast between these two groups of 
disciples at the graves of their respective masters. John 
the Baptist's followers venture into the very jaws of the 
lion to rescue the headless corse of their martyred teacher 
from a prison grave. They bear it away and lay it 
reverently in its unknown sepulchre, and when they have 
done these last offices of love they feel that all is over. 
They have no longer a centre, and they disintegrate. 
There was nothing to hold them together any more. 
The shepherd had been smitten, and the flock were 
scattered. As a " school " or a distinct community they 
cease to be. and are mostly absorbed into the ranks of 



i6o THE GRAVE OF THE DEAD JOHN [serm. 

Christ's followers. That sorrowful little company that 
turned from John's grave, perhaps amidst the grim rocks 
of Moab, perhaps in his native city amongst the hills of 
Judah, parted, then, to meet no more, and to bear away 
only a common sorrow that time would comfort, and a 
common memory that time would dim. 

The other group laid their martyred Master in his 
grave with as tender hands and as little hope as did 
John's disciples. The bond that held them together was 
gone too, and the disintegrating process began at once. 
We see them breaking up into little knots, and soon they, 
too, will be scattered. The women come to the grave to 
perform the woman's office of anointing, and they are left 
to go alone. Other slight hints are given which show 
how much the ties of companionship had been relaxed, 
even in a day, and how certainly and quickly they would 
have fallen asunder. But all at once a new element 
comes in, all is changed. The earliest visitors to the 
sepulchre leave it, not with the lingering sorrow of those 
who have no more that they can do, but with the quick 
buoyant step of people charged with great and glad 
tidings. They come to it wrapped in grief-— they leave 
it with great joy. They come to it, feeling that all was 
over, and their union with the rest who had loved Him 
was little more than a remembrance. They go away 
feeling that they are bound together more closely than 
ever. 

The grave of John was the end of a " school. " The 
grave of Jesus was the beginning of a Church. Why? 
The only answer is the message which the women 



▼ni.] AND THE GRA VE OF THE LIVING JESUS. 161 

Hxought back from the empty sepulchre on that Easter 
lay : " The Lord is risen." The whole history of the 
Christian Church, and even its very existence, is unintel- 
ligible, except on the supposition of the resurrection* 
But for that, the fate of John's disciples would have been 
the fate of Christ's — they would have melted away into 
che mass of the nation, and at most there would have 
Deen one more petty Galilean sect, that would have lived 
an for a generation and died out when the last of his 
companions died 

So from these two contrasted groups we may fairly 
gather some thoughts as to the Resurrection of Christ, as 
attested by the very existence of a Christian Church, 
and as to the joy of that resurrection. 

L Now the first point to be considered is, That the 
conduct of Christ's disciples after His death was exactly 
the opposite of what might have been expected 

They held together. The natural thing for them to do 
would have been to disband ; for the one bond was gone ; 
and if they had acted according to the ordinary laws of 
human conduct they would have said to themselves, Let 
us go back to our fishing-boats and our tax-gathering, and 
seek safety in separation, and nurse our sorrow apart 
A few lingering days might have been given to weep to* 
gether at His grave, and to assuage the first bitterness 
of grief and disappointment ; but when these were over, 
nothimg could have prevented Christianity and the Church 
from being buried in the same sepulchre as Jesus. At 
certainly as the stopping up of the fountain would empty 

u 



i6a THE GRAVE OF THE DEAD JOHN [serm. 

the river's bed, so surely would Christ's death have 
scattered His disciples. And that strange fact, that it did 
not scatter them, needs to be looked well into and fairly 
accounted for in some plausible manner. The end of 
John's school gives a parallel which brings the singularity 
of the fact into stronger relief; and looking at these two 
groups as they stand before us in these two texts, the 
question is irresistibly suggested, Why did not the one 
fall away into its separate elements, as the other did? 
The keystone of the arch was in both cases withdrawn 
— why did the one structure topple into ruin while the 
other stood firm ? 

Not only did the disciples of Christ keep united, but 
their conceptions of Jesus underwent a remarkable 
change, on His death. We might have expected indeed 
that, when memory began to work, and the disturbing 
influence of daily association was withdrawn, the same 
idealising process would have begun on their image of 
Him, which reveals and ennobles the characters of our 
dear ones who have gone away from us. Most men have 
to die before their true beauty is discerned. But no 
process of that sort will suffice to account for the change 
and heightening of the disciples' thoughts about their 
dead Lord. It was not merely that, as they remembered, 
they said, Did not our hearts burn within us by the way 
while He talked with us ? — but that His death wrought 
exactly the opposite effect from what it might have been 
expected to do. It ought to have ended their hope that 
He was the Messiah, and we know that within forty-eight 
hours it was beginning to do so, as we learn from the 



vin.] AND THE GRA VE OF THE LIVING JESUS. 163 

plaintive words of disappointed and fading hope : " We 
trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed 
Israel If, so early, the cold conviction was stealing 
over their hearts that their dearest expectation was 
proved by His death to have been a dream, what could 
have prevented its entire dominion over them, as the days 
grew into months and years ? But somehow or other that 
process was arrested, and the opposite one set in. The 
death that should have shattered Messianic dreams con- 
firmed them. The death that should have cast a deeper 
shadow of incomprehensibleness over His strange and 
lofty claims poured a new light upon them, which made 
them all plain and clear. The very parts of His teaching 
which His death would have made those who loved Him 
wish to forget, became the centre of His followers' faith. 
His cross became His throne. Whilst He lived with 
them they knew not what He said in His deepest words, 
but, by a strange paradox, His death convinced them that 
He was the Son of God, and that that which they had 
seen with their eyes, and their hands had handled, was 
the Eternal Life. The cross alone could never have 
done that Something else there must have been, if the 
men were sane, to account for this paradox. 

Nor is this all. Another equally unlikely sequel of the 
death of Jesus is the unmistakable moral transformation 
effected on the disciples. Timorous and tremulous before, 
something or other touched them into altogether new bold- 
ness and self-possession. Dependent on His presence 
before, and helpless when He was away from them for an 
hour, they become all at once strong and calm ; they stand 

m a 



164 THE GRAVE OF THE DEAD JOHN [serm. 

before the fury of a Jewish mob and the threatening of 
the Sanhedrim, unmoved and victorious. And these brave 
confessors and saintly heroes are the men who, a few 
weeks before, had been petulant, self-willed, jealous, 
cowardly. What had lifted them suddenly so far above 
themselves ? Their Master's death ? That would more 
naturally have taken any heart or courage out of them, 
and left them indeed as sheep in the midst of wolves. 
Why, then, do they thus strangely blaze up into grandeur 
and heroism ? Can any reasonable account be given of 
these paradoxes ? Surely it is not too much to ask of 
people who profess to explain Christianity on naturalistic 
principles, that they shall make the process clear to us 
by which, Christ being dead and buried, His disciples 
were kept together, learned to think more loftily of Him 
and sprang at once to a new grandeur of character. 
Why did not they do as John's disciples did, and dis- 
appear ? Why was not the stream lost in the sand, when 
the head-waters were cmt oft 

IL Notice then, next, that the disciples' immediate 
belief in the Resurrection furnishes a reasonable, and the 
only reasonable, explanation of the facts. There is no 
better historical evidence of a fact than the existence 
of an institution built upon it, and coeval with it The 
Christian Church is such evidence for the fact of the 
resurrection ; or, to put the conclusion in the most mod- 
erate fashion, for the belief in the resurrection. For, as 
we have shown, the natural effect of our Lord's death 
would have been to shatter the whole fabric : and if that 



vm.]AND THEGRA VE OF THE LIVING JESUS. 165 

effect were not produced, the only reasonable account of 
the force that hindered it is, that His followers believed 
that He rose again. Since that was their faith, one can 
understand how they were banded more closely together 
than ever. One can understand how their eyes were 
opened to know Him who was " declared to be the Son of 
God with power by the resurrection from the dead." 
One can understand how, in the enthusiasm of these new 
thoughts of their Lord, and in the strength of His victory 
over death, they put aside their old fears and littlenesses 
and clothed themselves in armour of light " The Lord 
is risen indeed " was the belief which made the continuous 
existence of the Church possible. Any other explanation 
of that great outstanding fact is lame and hopelessly in- 
sufficient 

We know that that belief was the belief of the early 
Church. Even if one waived all reference to the gospels 
we have the means of demonstrating that in Paul's undis- 
puted epistles. Nobody has questioned that he wrote 
the Fiist Epistle to the Corinthians. The date most 
generally assumed to that letter brings it within about 
five-and-twenty years of the crucifixion. In that letter, 
in addition to a multitude of incidental references to the 
Lord as risen, we have the great passage in the fifteenth 
chapter, where the apostle not only declares that the 
Resurrection was one of the two facts which made his 
" gospel," but solemnly enumerates the witnesses of the 
risen Lord, and alleges that this gospel of the resurrection 
was common to him and to all the Church. He tells us 
of Christ's appearance to himself at his conversion, which 



166 THE GRAVE OF THE DEAD JOHN [seru 

must have taken place within six or seven years of the 
crucifixion, and assures us that at that early period he 
found the whole Church believing and preaching Christ's 
resurrection. Their belief rested on their alleged inter- 
course with Him a few days after his death, and it is in- 
conceivable that within so short a period such a belief 
should have sprung up and been universally received if 
it had not begun when and as they said it did. 

But we are not left even to inferences of this kind to 
show that from the beginning the Church witnessed to 
the resurrection of Jesus. Its own existence is the great 
witness to its faith. And it is important to observe that, 
even if we had not the documentary evidence of the 
Pauline epistles as the earliest records of the gospels, and 
of the Acts of the Apostles, we should still have sufficient 
proof that the belief in the resurrection is as old as the 
Church. For the continuance of the Church cannot be 
explained without it If that faith had not dawned on 
their slow sad hearts on that Easter morning, a few weeks 
would have seen them scattered : and if once they had 
been scattered, as they inevitably would have been, no 
power could have reunited them, any more than a 
diamond once shattered can be pieced together again. 
There would have been no motive and no actors to frame 
a story of resurrection when once the little company had 
melted away. The existence of the Church depended on 
their belief that the Lord was risen. In the nature of 
the case that belief must have followed immediately on 
his death. It, and it only, reasonably accounts for the 
facts. And so, over and above apostles, and gospels, 



viil] AND THE GRA VE OF THE LIVING JESUS. 167 

and epistles, the Church is the great witness, by its very 
being, to its own immediate and continuous belief in the 
resurrection of our Lord. 

III. Again, we may remark that such a belief could 
not have originated or maintained itself unless it had 
been true. 

Our previous remarks have gone no farther than to 
establish the belief in the resurrection of Christ, as the 
basis of primitive Christianity. It is vehemently alleged, 
and we may freely admit, that the step is a long one 
from subjective belief to objective reality. But still it is 
surely perfectly fair to argue that a given belief is of such 
a nature that it cannot be supposed to rest on anything 
less solid than a fact ; and this is eminently the case in 
regard to the belief in Christ's resurrection. There have 
been many attempts on the part of those who reject that 
belief to account for its existence, and each of them in 
succession has " had its day, and ceased to be." Un- 
belief devours its own children remorselessly, and the 
succession to the throne of anti-christian scepticism is 
won, as in some barbarous tribes, by slaying the reigning 
sovereign. The armies of the aliens turn their weapons 
against one another, and each new assailant of the 
historical veracity of the gospels commences operations 
by showing that all previous assailants have been 
wrong, and that none of their explanations will hold 
water. 

For instance, we hear nothing now of the coarse old 
explanation that the story of the resurrection was a lie^ 



i68 THE GRAVE OF THE DEAD JOHN [serm. 

and became current through the conscious imposture of 
the leaders of the Church. And it was high time that 
such a solution should be laid aside. Who, with half an 
eye for character, could study the deeds and the writings 
of the apostles, and not feel that, whatever else they 
were, they were profoundly honest, and as convinced as 
of their own existence, that they had seen Christ " alive 
after His passion, by many infallible proofs " ? If Paul 
and Peter and John were conspirators in a trick, then 
their lives and their words were the most astounding 
anomaly. Who, either, that had the faintest perception 
of the forces that sway opinion and frame systems, could 
believe that the fair fabric of Christian morality was built 
on the sand of a lie, and cemented by the slime of deceit 
bubbling up from the very pit of hell ? Do men gather 
grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? That insolent 
hypothesis has had its day. 

Then when it was discredited, we were told the myth- 
ical tendency would explain everything. It showed us 
how good men could tell lies without knowing it, and 
how the religious value of an alleged fact in an alleged 
historical revelation did not in the least depend on its 
being a fact And that great discovery, which first con- 
verted solid historical Christianity into a gaseous condi- 
tion, and then caught the fumes in some kind of retort, 
and professed to hand us them back again improved by 
the sublimation, has pretty well gone the way of all hy- 
potheses. Myths are not made in three days, or in three 
years, and no more time can be allowed for the formation 
of the myth of the resurrection. What was the Church 



viii.] AND THE GRA VE OF THE LIVING JESUS. 169 

to feed on while the myth was growing ? It would have 
been starved to death long before. 

Then, the last new explanation which is gravely put 
forward, and is the prevailing one now, sustains itself by 
reference to undeniable facts in the history of religious 
movements, and of such abnormal attitudes of the mind 
as modern spiritualism. On the strength of which ana- 
logy we are invited to see in the faith of the early Chris- 
tians in the resurrection of the Lord a gigantic instance of 
" hallucination." No doubt there have been, and still 
are, extraordinary instances of its power, especially in 
minds excited by religious ideas. But we have only to 
consider the details of the facts in hand to feel that they 
cannot be accounted for on such a ground Do halluci- 
nations lay hold on five hundred people at once ? Does a 
hallucination last for a long country walk, and give rise 
to protracted conversation ? Does hallucination explain 
the story of Christ eating and drinking before His dis- 
ciples ? The uncertain twilight of the garden might have 
begotten such an airy phantom in the brain of a single 
sobbing woman; but the appearances to be explained 
are so numerous, so varied in character, embrace so 
many details, appeal to so many of the senses — to the ear 
and hand as well as to the eye — were spread over so 
long a period, and were simultaneously shared by so large 
a number, that no theory of such a sort can account for 
them, unless by impugning the veracity of the records. 
And then we are back again on the old abandoned 
ground of deceit and imposture. It sounds plausible to 
say, Hallucination is a proved cause of many a supposed 



170 THE GRA VE OF THE DEAD JOHN [serm. 

supernatural event — why not of this ? But the plausi- 
bility of the solution ceases as soon as you try it on the 
actual facts in their variety and completeness. It has 
to be eked out with a length of the fox's skin of deceit 
before it covers them ; and we may confidently assert 
that such a belief as the belief of the early Church in the 
resurrection of the Lord was never the product either of 
deceit or of illusion, or of any amalgam of the two. 

What new solutions the fertility of unbelief may yet 
bring forth, and the credulity of unbelief may yet accept, 
we know not : but we may firmly hold by the faith which 
breathed new hope and strange joy into that sad band 
on the first Easter morning, and rejoice with them in 
the glad wonderful fact that He is risen from the dead. 

IV. For that message is a message to us as truly as to 
the heavy-hearted unbelieving men that first received it 
We may think for a moment of the joy with which we 
should return from the sepulchre of the risen Saviour. 

How little these women knew that, as they went back 
from the grave in the morning twilight, they were the 
bearers of " great joy which should be to all people ! " 
To them and to the first hearers of their message there 
would be little clear in the rush of glad surprise, beyond 
the blessed thought, Then He is not gone from us alto- 
gether. Sweet visions of the resumption of happy com- 
panionship would fill their minds, and it would not be 
until calmer moments that the stupendous significance 
of the fact would reveal itself. 

Mary's rapturous gesture to clasp Him by the feet* 



vm.]AND THE GRAVE OF THE LIVING JESUS. 171 

when the certainty that it was in very deed He, flooded 
her soul with dazzling light, reveals her first emotion, 
which no doubt was also the first with them all, " Then 
we shall have Him with us again, and all the old joy of 
companionship will be ours once more." Nor were they 
wrong in thinking so, however little they as yet under- 
stood the future manner of their fellowship, or antici- 
pated His leaving them so soon. Nor are we without a 
share even in that phase of their joy ; for the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus Christ gives us a living Lord for our love, 
an ever present Companion and Brother for our hearts 
to hold, even if our hands cannot clasp Him by the feet 
A dead Christ might have been the object of faint his- 
torical admiration, and the fair statue might have stood 
amidst others in the halls of the world ; but the risen, 
living Christ can love and be loved, and we too may 
be glad with the joy of those who have found a heart to 
rest their hearts upon, and a companionship that can 
never faiL 

As the early disciples learned to reflect upon the fact 
of Christ's resurrection, its riches unfolded themselves by 
degrees, and the earliest aspect of its " power " was the 
light it shed on His person and work. Taught by it, as 
we have seen, they recognised Him for the Messiah 
whom they had long expected, and for something more 
— the Incarnate Son of God. That phase of their joy 
belongs to us too. If Christ, who made such avowals of 
His nature as we know He did, and hazarded such 
assertions of His claims, His personality and His office, 
as fill the gospels, were really laid in the grave and mm 



172 THE GRAVE OF THE DEAD JOHN [serm. 

corruption, then the assertions are disproved, the claims 
unwarranted, the office a figment of His imagination. 
He may still remain a great teacher, with a tremendous 
deduction to be made from the worth of His teaching. 
But all that is deepest in His own words about Himself, 
and His relation to men, must be sorrowfully put on one 
side. But if He, after such assertions and claims, rose 
from the dead, and rising, dieth no more, then for the 
last time, and in the mightiest tones, the voice that rent 
the heavens at His baptism and His transfiguration 
proclaims: "This is My beloved Son; hear ye Him.* 
Our joy in His resurrection is the joy of those to whom 
He is therein declared to be the Son of God, and who 
see in Christ risen their accepted Sacrifice, and their 
ever-living Redeemer. 

Such was the earliest effect of the resurrection of 
Jesus, if we trust the records of apostolic preaching. 
Then by degrees the joyful thought took shape in the 
Church's consciousness that their Shepherd had gone 
before them into the dark pen where Death pastured his 
flocks, and had taken it for His own, for the quiet resting- 
place where He would make them lie down by still 
waters, and whence He would lead them out to the lofty 
mountains where His fold should be. The power of 
Christ's resurrection as the pattern and pledge of ours is 
the final source of the joy which may fill our hearts as 
we turn away from that empty sepulchre. 

The world has guessed and feared, or guessed and 
hoped, but always guessed and doubted the life beyond. 
Analogies, poetic adumbrations, probabilities drawn from 



VIII.] AND THE GRA VE OF THE LIVING JESUS. 173 

consciousness and from conscience, from intuition and 
from anticipation, are but poor foundations on which to 
build a solid faith. But to those to whom the resurrec- 
tion of Christ is a fact their own future life is a fact. 
Here we have a solid certainty, and here alone. The 
heart says as we lay our dear ones in the grave, " Surely 
we part not for ever." The conscience says, as it points 
us to our own evil deeds, " After death the judgment." 
A deep indestructible instinct prophesies in every breast 
of a future. But all is vague and doubtful. The one 
proof of a life beyond the grave is the resurrection of 
Jesus Christ Therefore let us be glad with the gladness 
of men plucked from a dark abyss of doubt and un- 
certainty, and planted on the rock of solid certainty; 
and let us rejoice with joy unspeakable, and laden with 
a prophetic weight of glory, as we ring out the ancient 
Easter morning's greeting, " The Lord is risen indeed 1" 



SERMON IX. 

THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH AND THE 
ASCENSION OF CHRIST. 

2 Kings ii.ii. 

And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, 
there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted 
them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into 
heaven. 

St. Luke xxiv. 51. 

And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted 
from them, and carried up into heaven. 

HPHESE two events, the Translation of Elijah and the 
A Ascension of our Lord, have sometimes been put 
side by side in order to show that the latter narrative is 
nothing but a " variant " of the former. See, it is said, 
the source of your New Testament story is only the old 
legend shaped anew by the wistful regrets of the early 
disciples. But to me it seems that the simple comparison 
of the two narratives is sufficient to bring out such funda- 
mental difference in the ideas which they respectively em- 
body as amount to opposition, and make any such theory 
of the origin of the later absurdly improbable. I could 
wish no better foil for the history of the ascension than 
the history of Elijah's rapture. The comparison brings 



serm. DC] THE TRANSLA TION OF ELIJAH. 175 

out contrasts at every step, and there is no readier way of 
throwing into strong relief the meaning and purpose of the 
former, than holding up beside it the story of the latter. 
The real parallel makes the divergences the more remark- 
able, for likeness sharpens our perception of unlikeness, 
and no contrast is so forcible as the contrast of things that 
correspond I am much mistaken if we shall not find al- 
most every truth of importance connected with our Lord's 
ascension emphasised for us by the comparison to which 
we now proceed. 

I. The first point which may be mentioned is the con* 
trast between the manner of Elijah's translation, and that 
of our Lord's ascension. 

It is perhaps not without significance that the place of 
the one event was on the uplands or in some of the rocky 
gorges beyond Jordan, and that of the other, the slopes 
of Olivet above Bethany. The lonely prophet, who had 
burst like a meteor on Israel from the solitudes of G Head, 
whose fervour had ever and again been rekindled by re- 
turn to the wilderness, whose whole career had isolated 
him from men, found the fitting place for that last wonder 
amidst the stern silence where he had so often sought 
asylum and inspiration. He was close to the scenes of 
mighty events in the past There, on that overhanging 
peak, the lawgiver whose work he was continuing and 
with whom he was to be so strangely associated on the 
Mount of Transfiguration, had made him ready for his 
lonely grave. Here at his feet, the river had parted for 
the victorious march of Israel. Away down on his 



i 7 6 THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH [serm. 

horizon the sunshine gleamed on the waters of the Dead 
Sea ; and thus, on his native soil, surrounded by memo- 
rials of the Law which he laboured to restore, and of the 
victories which he would fain have brought back, and of 
the judgments which he saw again impending over Israel, 
the stern solitary ascetic, the prophet of righteousness, 
whose single arm stayed the downward course of a nation, 
passed from his toil and his warfare. 

What a different set of associations cluster round the 
place of Christ's ascension — " Bethany," or, as it is more 
particularly specified in the Acts, " Olivet 1 " In the 
very heart of the land, close by and yet out of sight of 
the great city, in no wild solitude, but perhaps in some 
dimple of the hill, neither shunning nor courting spec- 
ators, with the quiet home where he had rested so often 
in the little village at their feet there, and Gethsemane 
a few furlongs off, in such scenes did the Christ whose 
delights were with the sons of men, and His life lived in 
closest companionship with His brethren, choose the place 
whence He should ascend to their Father and His Father. 
Nor perhaps was it without a meaning that the Mount 
which received the last print of His ascending footstep 
was that which a mysterious prophecy designated as 
destined to receive the first print of the footstep of the 
Lord coming to end the long warfare with evil at a future 
day. 

But more important than the localities is the contrasted 
manner of the two ascents. The prophet's end was like 
the man. It was fitting that he should be swept up the 
skies in tempest and fire. The impetuosity of his nature, 



IX/J AND THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST. m 

and the stormy energy of his career had already been 
symbolised in the mighty and strong wind which rent the 
rocks, and in the fire that followed the earthquake ; and 
similarly nothing could be more appropriate than that 
sudden rapture in storm and whirlwind, escorted by the 
flaming chivalry of heaven. 

Nor is it only as appropriate to the character of the 
prophet and his work that this tempestuous translation 
is noteworthy. It also suggests very plainly that Elijah 
was lifted to the skies by power acting on him from 
without He did not ascend; he was carried up; the 
earthly frame and the human nature had no power to 
rise. " No man hath ascended into heaven." The two 
men of whom the Old Testament speaks were alike in 
this, that " God took them." The tempest and the fiery 
chariot tell us how great was the exercise of Divine power 
which bore the gross mortality thither, and how unfamiliar 
the sphere into which it passed. 

How full of the very spirit of Christ's whole life is the 
contrasted manner of His ascension ! The silent gentle- 
ness, which did not strive nor cry nor cause His voice to 
be heard in the streets, marks Him even in that hour of 
lofty and transcendent triumph. There is no outward 
sign to accompany His slow upward movement through 
the quiet air. No blaze of fiery chariots, nor agitation 
of tempest is needed to bear Him heavenwards. The 
out-stretched hands drop the dew of His benediction on 
the little company, and so He floats upward, His own will 
and indwelling power the royal chariot which bears 
him, and calmly " leaves the world and goes onto the 



178 THE TRANSLA TION OF ELIJAH [serm. 

Father." The slow continuous movement of ascent is 
emphatically made prominent in the brief narratives, both 
by the phrase in Luke, u He was carried up," which 
expresses the continuous leisurely motion, and by the 
picture in the Acts, of the disciples gazing into heaven 
"as He went up," in which latter word is brought out, 
not only the slowness of the movement, but its origin in 
His own will and its carrying out by His own power. 

Nor is this absence of any vehicle or external agency 
destroyed by the fact that " a cloud " received Him out of 
their sight, for its purpose was not to raise Him heaven- 
ward, but to hide Him from the gazers' eyes, that He 
might not seem to them to dwindle into distance, but 
that their last look and memory might be of His clearly 
discerned and loving face. Possibly too, we may be 
intended to remember the cloud which guided Israel, the 
glory which dwelt between the cherubim, the cloud which 
overshadowed the Mount of Transfiguration, and to see 
in this a symbol of the Divine Presence welcoming to 
itself, His battle fought, the Son of His love. 

Be that as it may, the manner of our Lord's ascension 
by His own inherent power is brought into boldest relief 
when contrasted with Elijah's rapture, and is evidently 
the fitting expression, as it is the consequence, of His sole 
and singular Divine nature. It accords with His own 
manner of reference to the ascension, while He was on 
earth, which ever represents Him not as being taken^ but 
as going: " I leave the world and go to the Father.* 
H I ascend to my Father and their Father." The highest 
hope of the devoutest souls before Him had been, " Thou 



IX.] AND THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST. 179 

wilt afterwards take me to glory." The highest hope of 
devout souls since Him has been, " We shall be caught 
up to meet the Lord." But this man ever speaks of 
Himself as able when He will, by His own power, to rise 
where no man hath ascended. His Divine nature and 
pre-existence shine clearly forth, and as we stand gazing 
at Him blessing the world as He rises into the heavens, 
we know that we are looking on no mere mysterious 
elevation of a mortal to the skies, but are beholding the 
return of the Incarnate Lord, that willed to tarry among 
our earthly tabernacles for a time, to the glory where 
He was before, " His own calm home, His habitation from 
eternity." 

IL Another striking point of contrast embraces the 
relation which these two events respectively bear to the 
lifts work which had preceded them. 

The falling mantle of Elijah has become a symbol 
known to all the world, for the transference of unfinished 
tasks and the appointment of successors to departed 
greatness. Elisha asked that he might have a double 
portion of his master's spirit, not meaning twice as much 
as his master had had, but the eldest son's share of the 
father's possessions, the double of the other children's 
portion. And, though his master had no power to 
bestow the gift, and had to reply as one who has nothing 
that he has not received, and cannot dispose of the grace 
that dwells in him, the prayer was answered, and the 
feebler nature of Elisha was fitted for the continuance of 
the work which Elijah left undone. 

m • 



i to THE TRANSLA TION OF ELIJAH [SERM. 

The mantle that passed from one to the other was the 
symbol of office and authority transferred ; the functions 
were the same, whilst the holders had changed. The sons 
of the prophets bow before the new master; "the spirit 
of Elijah doth rest on Eiisha." 

So the world goes on. Man after man serves his 
generation by the will of God, and is gathered to his 
fathers; and a new arm grasps the mantle to smite 
Jordan, and a new voice speaks from his empty place, 
and men recognise the successor, and forget the pre- 
decessor. 

We turn to Christ's ascension, and there we meet with 
nothing analogous to this transference of office. No 
mantle falling from His shoulders lights on any of that 
group, none are hailed as His successors. What He has 
done bears and needs no repetition whilst time shall roll, 
whilst eternity shall last His work is one : " the help 
that is done on earth, He doeth it all Himsel£" His 
ascension completed the witness of heaven begun at His 
resurrection that H He has offered one sacrifice for sins, 
for ever." He has left no unfinished work which another 
may perfect He has done no work which another 
may do again for new generations. He has spoken all 
truth, and none may add to His words. He has fulfilled 
all righteousness, and none may better His pattern. He 
has borne all the world's sin, and no time can waste the 
power of that sacrifice, nor any man add to its absolute 
sufficiency. This king of men wears a crown to which 
there is no heir. This priest has a priesthood which 
passes to no other. This "prophet" does a live for 



nc] AND THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST. 181 

ever.* The world sees all other guides and helpers pass 
away, and every man's work is caught up by other hands 
and carried on where he drops it, and the short memories 
and shorter gratitudes of men turn to the rising sun ; but 
one name remains undimmed by distance, and one work 
remains unapproached and unapproachable, and one man 
remains whose office none other can hold, whose bow none 
but He can bend, whose mantle none can wear. Christ 
has ascended up on high and left a finished work fof 
all men to trust, for no man to continue. 

III. Whilst our Lord's ascension is thus marked as the 
seal of a work in which He has no successor, it is also 
emphatically set forth, by contrast with Elijah's translation, 
as the transition to a continuous energy for and in the 
world. 

Clearly the other narrative derives all its pathos from 
the thought that Elijah's work is done. His task is over, 
and nothing more is to be hoped for from him. But that 
same absence from the history of Christ's ascension, o! 
any hint of a successor, to which we have referred in the 
previous remarks, has an obvious bearing on His present 
relation to the world as well as on the completeness of 
His unique past work. 

When He ascended up on high, He relinquished 
nothing of His activity for us, but only cast it into a new 
form, which in some sense is yet higher than that which 
it took on earth. His work for the world is in one 
aspect completed on the cross, but in another it will 
never be completed until all the blessings which that 



i8a THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH [serm. 

cross has lodged in the midst of humanity, have reached 
their widest possible diffusion and their highest possible 
development Long ages ago He cried, " It is finished," 
but we may be far yet from the time when He shall say, 
" It is done ; " and for all the slow years between His own 
word gives us the law of his activity, " My father worketh 
hitherto, and I work." 

That ascension is no withdrawal of the Captain of our 
salvation from the field where we are left to fight, nor 
has He gone up to the mountain, leaving us alone to tug 
at the oar, and shiver in the cold night air. True, there 
may seem a strange contrast between the present condi- 
tion of the Lord who " was received up into heaven, and 
sat on the right hand of God," and that of the servants 
wandering through the world on His business ; but the 
contrast is harmonised by the next words, "the Lord 
also worketh with them." Yes, He has gone up to sit at 
the right hand of God. That session at God's right hand 
to which the ascension is chiefly of importance as the 
transition, means the repose of a perfected redemption, 
the communion of Divine worship, the exercise of all the 
omnipotence of God, the administration of the world's 
history. He has ascended that He might fill all things, 
that He might pour out His spirit upon us, that the path 
to God may be trodden by our lame feet, that the whole 
resources of the Divine nature may be wielded by the 
hands that were nailed to the cross, and for the further- 
ance of the same mighty purpose of salvation. 

Elijah knew not whether his spirit could descend upon 
his follower. But Christ, though as we have said, He 



ix.] AND THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST. 183 

left no legacy of falling mantle to any, left His spirit to 
His people. What Elisha gained, Elijah lost What 
Elisha desired, Elijah could not give nor guarantee. 
How firm and assured beside Elijah's dubious "Thou 
hast asked a hard thing," and his " If thou see me, it shall 
be so " is Christ's "It is expedient for you that I go away. 
For if I go not away the Comforter will not come, but if 
I depart, I will send him unto you." 

So manifold are the forms of that new and continuous 
activity of Christ into which He had passed when He left 
the earth : and as we contrast these with the utter help- 
lessness any longer to counsel, rebuke or save, to which 
death reduces those who love us best, and to which even 
his glorious rapture into the heavens brought the strong 
prophet of fire, we can take up, with a new depth of 
meaning, the ancient words that tell of Christ's exclusive 
prerogative of succouring and inspiring from within the 
veil: "Thou hast ascended on high; thou hast led 
captivity captive ; thou hast received gifts for men." 

IV. The ascension of Christ is still further set forth, 
in its very circumstances, by contrast with Elijah's 
translation, as bearing on the hopes of humanity for the 
future. 

The prophet is caught up to the glory and the rest 
for himself alone, and the sole share which the gazing 
follower or the sons of the prophets, straining their eyes 
there at Jericho, had in his triumph, was a deepened con- 
viction of this prophet's mission, and perhaps some 
clearer faith in a future life. Their wonder and sorreS", 



%U THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH [serm. 

Eiisha's immediate grasping of his new power, the 
prophets' immediate transference of their allegiance to 
their new head, show that on both sides it was felt they 
had no interest in the event beyond that of awe-struck 
beholders. No light streamed from it on their own 
future. The path they had to tread was still the common 
road into the great darkness, as solitary and unknown as 
before. The chariot of fire parted their master from the 
common experience of humanity as from their fellowship, 
making him an exception to the sad rule of death, which 
frowned the grimmer and more inexorable by contrast 
with his radiant translation. 

The very reverse is true of Christ's ascension. In Him 
our nature is taken up to the throne of God His resur- 
rection assures us that " them which sleep in Jesus will 
God bring with him/' His passage to the heavens 
assures us that " they who are alive and remain shall be 
caught up together with them," and that all of both 
companies shall with Him live and reign, sharing His 
dominion, and moulded to His image. 

If we would know of what our manhood is capable, if 
we would rise to the height of the hopes which God 
means that we should cherish, if we would gain a living 
grasp of the power that fulfils them, we have to stand 
there gazing on the piled cloud that sails slowly upwards, 
the pure floor for our Brother's feet As we watch it 
rising with a motion which is rest, we have the right to 
think, " Thither the forerunner is for us entered," We 
see there what man is meant for, what men who love Him 
attain. True t the world is still full of death and sorrow, 



IX.] AND THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST. 185 

man's dominion seems a futile dream and a hope that 
mocks, but we see Jesus, ascended up on high, and in 
Him we too are made to sit together in heavenly places. 
" The breaker is gone up before them. Their king shall 
pass before them, and the Lord at the head of them." 

There is yet another aspect in which our Lord's ascen- 
sion bears on our hopes for the future, namely, as con- 
nected with His coming again. 

There, too, the contrast of Elijah's translation may 
serve for emphasis. Prophecy, indeed, in its latest 
voice, spoke of sending Elijah the prophet before the 
coming of the day of the Lord, and rabbinical legends 
delighted to tell how he had been carried to the Garden 
of Eden, whence he would come again, in Israel's sorest 
need. But the prophecy had no thought of a personal 
reappearance, and the dreams are only dreams such as 
we find in the legendary history of many nations. As 
Elisha recrossed the Jordan, he bore with him only a 
mantle and a memory, not a hope. 

" Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into 
heaven ? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you 
into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have 
seen him go into heaven." How grand is the use in 
these mighty words of the name Jesus, the name that 
speaks of His true humanity, with all its weakness, limita- 
tions, and sorrow, with all its tenderness and brotherhood ! 
The man who died and rose again, has gone up on high. 
u He will so come as He has gone." " So * — that is to 
say, personally, corporeally, visibly, on clouds, perhaps 
to that very spot, M and Ids feet shall stand in that day 



1 86 THE TRANS LA TION OF ELIJAH, [serm. ix. 

upon the Mount of Olives." Thus Scripture teaches us 
ever to associate together the departure and the corning 
of the Lord, and always when we meditate on His as- 
cension to prepare a place for us, to think of His real 
presence with us through the ages, and of His coming 
again to receive us to Himself. 

That parting on Olivet cannot be the end. Such a 
leave-taking is the prophecy of happy greetings and an 
inseparable reunion. The king has gone to receive a 
kingdom, and to return. Memory and hope coalesce, as 
we think of Him who is passed into the heavens, and the 
heart of the church has to cherish at once the glad 
thought that its Head and helper has entered within the 
veil, and the still more joyous one, which lightens the 
days of separation and widowhood, that the Lord will 
come again. 

So let us take our share in the great joy with which 
the disciples returned to Jerusalem, left like sheep in 
the midst of wolves as they were, and " let us set our 
affections on things above, where Christ is> sitting at 
the right hand of God.* 



SERMON X. 

CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW t 

A NEW YEAR'S SERMON. 

Isaiah Ivi. 12. 
To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant 

HPHESE words, as they stand, are the call of boon 
companions to new revelry. They are part of the 
prophet's picture of a corrupt age when the men of influ- 
ence and position had thrown away their sense of duty, 
and had given themselves over, as aristocracies and pluto- 
cracies are ever tempted to do, to mere luxury and good 
living. They are summoning one another to their coarse 
orgies. The roystering speaker says, " Do not be afraid 
to drink; the cellar will hold out. To-day's carouse 
will not empty it ; there will be enough for to-morrow/' 
He forgets to-morrow's headaches ; he forgets that on 
some to-morrow the wine will be finished ; he forgets that 
the fingers of a hand may write the doom of the rioters 
on the very walls of the banqueting chamber. 

What have such words, the very motto of insolent pre- 
sumption and short-sighted animalism, to do with New 
Year's thoughts ? Only this, that base and foolish as 
they are on such lips, it is possible to lift them from the 
mud, and k ake them as the utterance of a lofty and calm 



1 88 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW 7 [serm. 

hope which will not be disappointed, and of a firm and 
lowly resolve which may ennoble life. Like a great many 
other sayings, they may fit the mouth either of a sot or of 
a saint All depends on what the things are which we 
are thinking about when we use them. There are things 
about which it is absurd and worse than absurd to say this, 
and there are things about which it is the soberest truth 
to say it So looking forward into the merciful darkness 
of another year, we may look at these words as either the 
expressions of hopes which it is folly to cherish, or of 
hopes that it is reasonable to entertain. 

L This expectation, if directed to any outward things, 
is an illusion and a dream. 

These coarse revellers into whose lips our text is put 
only meant by it to brave the future and defy to-morrow 
in the riot of their drunkenness. They show us the vul- 
garest, lowest form which the expectation can take, a form 
which I need say nothing about now. 

But I may just note in passing that to look forward 
principally to anticipate pleasure or enjoyment is a very 
poor and unworthy thing. It is weakening and lowering 
every day, to use our faculty of hope mainly to paint the 
future as a scene of delights and satisfactions. We spoil 
to-day by thinking how we can turn it to the account of 
pleasure. We spoil to-morrow before it comes, and hurt our 
selves, if we are more engaged with fancying how it will 
minister to our joy, than how we can make it minister to 
our duty. It is base and foolish to be forecasting our plea- 
sures, the true temper is to be forecasting our work. 



xj CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW t 189 

But, leaving that consideration, let us notice how use- 
less such anticipation, and how mad such confidence, as 
that expressed in the text is, if directed to anything short 
of God. 

We are so constituted as that we grow into a persuasion 
that what has been will be, and yet we can give no suffi- 
cient reason to ourselves of why we expect it 

" The uniformity of the course of nature n is the corner- 
stone, not only of physical science, but, in a more homely 
form, of the wisdom which grows with experience. We 
all believe that the sun will rise to-morrow because it rose 
to-day, and for all the yesterdays. But there was a to- 
day which had no yesterday, and there will be a to-day 
which will have no to-morrow. The sun will rise for the 
last time. The uniformity had a beginning and will have 
an end. 

So, even as an axiom of thought, the anticipation that 
things will continue as they have been because they have 
been, seems to rest on an insufficient basis. How much 
more so, as to our own little lives and their surroundings ! 
There the only thing which we may be quite sure of about 
to-morrow is that it will not be " as this day." Even for 
those of us who may have reached, for example, the level 
plateau of middle life, where our position and tasks are 
pretty well fixed, and we have little more to expect than 
the monotonous repetition of the same duties recurring at 
the same hour every day — even for such each day has its 
own distinctive character. Like a flock of sheep they seem 
all alike, but each, on closer inspection, reveals a physiog- 
nomy of its own. There will be so many small changes 



190 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF T0-M0RR0 W t [serm. 

that even the same duties or enjoyments will not be quite 
the same, and even if the outward things remained abso- 
lutely unaltered, we who meet them are not the same. 
Little variations in mood and tone, diminished zest here, 
weakened power there, other thoughts breaking in, and 
over and above all the slow silent change wrought on us 
by growing years, make the perfect reproduction of any 
part impossible. So, however familiar may be the road 
we have to traverse, however uneventfully the same our 
days may sometimes for long spaces in our lives seem to 
be, though to ourselves often our day's work may appear 
a mill-horse round, yet in deepest truth, if we take into 
account the whole sum of the minute changes in it and in 
us, it may be said of each step of our journey, " Ye have 
not passed this way heretofore" 

But, besides all this, we know that these breathing-times 
when w we have no changes," are but pauses in the storm, 
landing-places in the ascent, the interspaces between the 
shocks. However hope may tempt us to dream that the 
future is like the present, a deeper wisdom lies in all our 
souls which says No. Drunken bravery may front that 
darkness with such words as these of our text, but the 
least serious spirit, in its most joyous moods, never quite 
succeeds in forgetting the solemn probabilities, possibili- 
ties, and certainties which lodge in the unknown future. 
So to a wise man it is ever a sobering exercise to look 
forward, and we shall be nearest the truth if we take due 
account, as we do so to-day, of the undoubted fact that 
the only thing certain about to-morrow is that it will not 
be as (hit day. 



X.] CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW t 191 

There are the great changes which come to some one 
every day, which may come to any of us any day, which 
will come to all of us some day. Some of us will die 
this year ; on a day in our new diaries some of us will 
make no entry, for we shall be gone. Some of us will 
be smitten down by illness; some of us will lose our 
dearest; some of us will lose fortune. Which of us 
it is to be, and where within these twelve months the 
blow is to fall, is mercifully hidden. The only thing that 
we certainly know is that these arrows will fly. The 
thing we do not know is whose heart they will pierce. 
This makes the gaze into the darkness grave and solemn. 
There is ever something of dread in Hope's blue eyes. 
True, the ministry of change is blessed and helpful ; true, 
the darkness which hides the future is merciful, and need- 
ful if the present is not to be marred. But helpful and 
merciful as they are, they invest the unknown to-morrow 
with a solemn power which it is good, though sobering, 
for us to feel, and they silence on every lip but that of 
riot and foolhardy debauchery the presumptuous words, 
11 To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abun- 
dant* 

IL But yet there is a possibility of so using the words 
as to make them the utterance of a sober certainty which 
will not be put to shame. 

So long as our hope and anticipations creep along the 
low levels of earth, and are concerned with external and 
creatural good, their language can never rise beyond, 
u To-morrow may be as this day." Oftenest it reaches 



193 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW t [serm. 

only to the height of the wistful wish, " May it be as this 
day I" But there is no need for our being tortured with 
such slippery possibilities. We may send out our hope 
like Noah's dove, not to hover restlessly over a heaving 
ocean of change, but to light on firm, solid, certainty 
and fold its wearied wings there. Forecasting is ever 
close by foreboding. Hope is interwoven with fear, the 
golden threads of the weft crossing the dark ones of the 
warp, and the whole texture gleaming bright or glooming 
black according to the angle at which it is seen. 

So is it always until we turn our hope away from earth 
to God, and fill the future with the light of His presence 
and the certainty of His truth. Then the mists and 
doubts roll away ; we get above the region of " per- 
hapses" into that of " surelys ;" the future is as certain 
as the past : hope as assured of its facts as memory, 
prophecy as veracious as history. 

Looking forward then, let us not occupy ourselves 
with visions which we know may or may not come true. 
Let us not feed ourselves with illusions which may make 
the reality, when it comes to shatter them, yet harder 
to bear. But let us make God in Christ our hope, and 
pass from peradventures to certitudes ; from " To-morrow 
may be as this day — would that it might," to u It shall 
be, it shall be, for God is my expectation and my 
hope." 

We have an unchanging and an inexhaustible God, 
and He is the true guarantee of the future for us. The 
more we accustom ourselves to think of Him as shaping 
all that is contingent and changeful in the nearest and 



x.] CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW t 193 

in the remotest to-morrow, and as being Himself the 
immutable portion of our souls, the calmer will be our 
outlook into the darkness, and the more bright will be 
the clear light of certainty which burns for us in it. 

To-day's wealth may be to-morrow's poverty, to-day's 
health to-morrow's sickness, to-day's happy companion- 
ship of love to-morrow's aching solitude of heart, but 
to-da/s God will be to-morrow's God, to-day's Christ 
will be to-morrow's Christ Other fountains may dry up 
in heat or freeze in winter, but this knows no change, 
u in summer and winter it shall be.* Other fountains 
may sink low in their basins after much drawing, but this 
is ever full, and after a thousand generations have drawn 
from it its stream is broad and deep as erer. Other 
fountains may be left behind on the march, and the wells 
and palm-trees of each Elim on our road be succeeded 
by a dry and thirsty land where no water is, but this 
spring follows us all through the wilderness, and makes 
music and spreads freshness ever by our path. We can 
forecast nothing beside. We can be sure of this, that 
God will be with us in all the days that lie before us. 
What may be round the next headland we know not; 
but this we know, that the same sunshine will make a 
broadening path across the waters right to where we 
rock on the unknown sea, and the same unmoving 
mighty star will burn for our guidance. So we may let 
the waves and currents roll as they list — or rather as He 
wills, and be little concerned about the incidents or the 
companions of our voyage, since He is with us. We 
can front the unknown to-morrow, even when we most 





194 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORRO Wt [serm. 

keenly feel how solemn and sad are the things it may 
bring. 

14 It can bring with it nothing 
But He will bear us through." 

If only our hearts be fixed on God and we are feeding 
our minds and wills on Him, His truth and His will, 
then we may be quite certain that, whatever goes, our 
truest riches will abide, and whoever leaves our little 
company of loved ones, our best Friend will not go 
away. Therefore, lifting our hopes beyond the low 
levels of earth, and making our anticipations of the 
future the reflection of the brightness of God thrown on 
that else blank curtain, we may turn into the worthy 
utterance of sober and saintly faith, the folly of the 
riotous sensualist when he said, " To-morrow shall be as 
this day." 

The past is the mirror of the future for the Christian ; 
we look back on all the great deeds of old by which God 
has redeemed and helped souls that cried to Him, and we 
find in them the eternal laws of His working. They are 
all true for to-day as they were at first ; they remain true 
for ever. The whole history of the past belongs to us, 
and avails for our present and for our future. " As we 
have heard, so have we seen in the city of our God." 
To-day's experience runs on the same lines as the stories 
of the " years of old," which are " the years of the right 
hand of the Most High." Experience is ever the parent 
of hope, and the latter can only build with the bricks 
which the former gives. So the Christian has to lay 



X.] CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW t 195 

hold on all that God's mercy has done to the ages that 
are gone by, and because He is a " faithful Creator " to 
transmute history into prophecy, and triumph in that 
" the God of Jacob is our refuge." 

Nor only does the record of what He has been to 
others come in to bring material for our forecast of the 
future, but also the remembrance of what He has been 
to ourselves. Has He been with us in six troubles? 
We may be sure He will not abandon us at the seventh. 
He is not in the way of beginning to build and leaving 
His work unfinished. Remember what He has been to 
you, and rejoice that there has been one thing in your 
lives which, you may be sure, will always be there. Feed 
your certain hopes for to-morrow on thankful remem- 
brances of many a yesterday. " Forget not the works 
of God," that you may " set your hopes on God." Let 
our anticipations base themselves on memory, and utter 
themselves in the prayer, " Thou hast been my help ; 
leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation." 
Then the assurance that He whom we know to be good 
and wise and strong will shape the future, and Himself 
be the future for us, will take all the fear out of that 
forward gaze, will condense our light and unsubstantial 
hopes into solid realities, and set before us an endless 
line of days, in each of which we may gain more of Him, 
whose face has brightened the past and will brighten the 
future, till days shall end and time shall open into 
eternity. 



196 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW 7 [SIRM. 

III. Looked at in another aspect, these words may be 
taken as the tow of a firm and lowly resolve. 

There is a future which we can but very slightly in- 
fluence, and the less we look at that the better every way. 
But there is also a future which we can mould as we wish 
— the future of our own characters, the only future which 
is really ours at all — and the more clearly we set it before 
ourselves, and make up our minds as to whither we wish 
it to be tending the better. In that region, it is eminently 
true that " to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more 
abundant" The law of continuity shapes our moral and 
spiritual characters. What I am to-day, I shall increas- 
ingly be to morrow. The awful power of habit solidifies 
actions into customs, and prolongs the reverberation of 
every note once sounded, along the vaulted roof of the 
chamber where we live. To-day is the child of yesterday 
and the parent of to-morrow. 

That solemn certainty of the continuance and increase 
of moral and spiritual characteristics works in both good 
and bad, but with a difference. To secure its full 
blessing in the gradual development of the germs of good 
there must be constant effort and tenacious resolution. 
So many foes beset the springing of the good seed in 
our hearts — what with the flying flocks of light-winged 
fugitive thoughts ever ready to swoop down as soon as 
the sower's back is turned and snatch it away, what with the 
hardness of the rock which the roots soon encounter, what 
with the thick-sown and quick-springing thorns — that if 
we trust to the natural laws of growth and neglect our 



X] CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW 7 197 

careful tending, we may sow much but we shall gather 
little. But to inherit the full consequences of that same law 
working in the growth and development of the evil in us 
nothing is needed but carelessness. Leave it alone for 
11 year or two and the " fruitful field will be a forest," a 
jungle of matted weeds, with a struggling blossom where 
cultivation had once been. 

But if humbly we resolve and earnestly toil, looking for 
His help, we may venture to hope that our characters will 
grow in goodness and in likeness to our dear Lord, that 
we shall not cast away our confidence, nor make ship- 
wreck of our faith, that each new day shall find in us a 
deeper love, a perfecter consecration, a more joyful ser- 
vice, and that so, in all the beauties of the Christian soul 
and in all the blessings of the Christian life, " to-morrow 
shall be as this day, and much more abundant" "To 
him that hath shall be given." " The path of the just is 
as the shining light, that shineth more and more until the 
noon tide of the day." 

So we may look forward undismayed, and while we 
recognise the darkness that wraps to-morrow in regard to 
all mundaae affairs, may feed our fortitude and fasten our 
confidence on the double certainties that we shall have 
God and more of God for our treasure, that we shall have 
likeness to Him and more of likeness in our characters. 
Fleeting moments may come and go. The uncertain 
days may exercise their various ministry of giving and 
taking away, but whether they plant or root up our earthly 
props, whether they build or destroy our earthly houses, 
they will increase our riches in the heavens, and give us 



198 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW 7 [serm. 

fuller possession of deeper draughts from the inexhaustible 
fountain of living waters. 

How dreadfully that same law of the continuity and 
development of character works in some men there is 
no need now to dwell upon. By slow, imperceptible, 
certain degrees the evil gains upon them. Yesterday's 
sin smooths the path for to-day's. The temptation onca 
yielded to gains power. The crack in the embankment 
which lets a drop or two ooze through is soon a hole 
which lets out a flood. It is easier to find a man who haf 
done a wrong thing than to find a man who has done it 
only once. Peter denied his Lord thrice, and each time 
more easily than the time before. So, before we know it, 
the thin gossamer threads of single actions are twisted 
into a rope of habit, and we are " tied with the cords of 
our sins." Let no man say, "Just for once I may 
venture on evil ; so far I will go and no farther. " Nay, 
"to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more 
abundant" 

How important, then, the smallest acts become when 
we think of them as thus influencing character ! The 
microscopic creatures, thousands of which will go into a 
square inch, make the great white cliffs that beetle over 
the wildest sea and front the storm. So, permanent and 
solid character is built up out of trivial actions, and this 
is the solemn aspect of our passing days, that they are 
making us. 

We might well tremble before such a thought, which 
would be dreadful to the best of us, if it were not for 
pardoning mercy and renewing grace The law of 



x.] CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW t 199 

reaping what we have sown, or of continuing as we have 
begun, may be modified as far as our sins and failures 
are concerned. The entail may be cut off, and to-morrow 
need not inherit to-day's guilt, nor to-day's habits. The 
past may be all blotted out through the mercy of God in 
Christ No debt need be carried forward to another page 
of the book of our lives, for Christ has given Himself for 
us, and He speaks to us all — " Thy sins be forgiven thee." 
No evil habit need continue its dominion over us, nor are 
we obliged to carry on the bad tradition of wrong-doing 
into a future day, for Christ lives, and " if any man be in 
Christ, he is a new creature ; old things are passed away, 
all things are become new." 

So then, brethren, let us humbly take the confidence 
which these words may be used to express, and as we 
stand on the threshold of a new year and wait for the 
curtain to be drawn, let us print deep on our hearts the 
uncertainty of our hold of all things here, nor seek to 
build nor anchor on these, but lift our thoughts to Him, 
who will bless the future as He has blessed the past, and 
will even enlarge the gifts of his love and the help of his 
right hand Let us hope for ourselves not the continuance 
or increase of outward good, but the growth of our souls 
in all things lovely and of good report, the daily advance 
in the love and likeness of our Lord. 

So each day, each succeeding wave of the ocean of 
time shall cast up treasures for us as it breaks at our 
feet 

As we grow in years, we shall grow in the grace and 
knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, until 



200 CAN WE MAKE SURE OF TO-MORROW 7 [ser. x. 

the day comes when we shall exchange earth for heaven. 
That will be the sublimest application of this text, when, 
dying, we can calmly be sure that though to-day be on this 
side and to-morrow on the other bank of the black river, 
there will be no break in the continuity, but only an 
infinite growth in our life, and heaven's to-morrow shall 
be as earth's to-day, and much more abundant 



SERMON XL 

TWE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST IN HIS 
TEMPTATIONS. 

St. Luke xxii. 28. 
Ye are they which Hare continued with me in my temptations. 

X 1 IE wonder at the disciples when we read of the un- 
* * seemly strife for precedence which jars on the 
tender solemnities of the Last Supper. We think them 
strangely unsympathetic and selfish ; and so they were. 
But do not let us be too hard on them, nor forget that 
there was a very natural reason for the close connection 
which is found in the gospels between our Lord's an- 
nouncements of His sufferings and this eager dispute as to 
who should be the greatest in the kingdom. They dimly 
understood what He meant, but they did understand this 
much, that His " sufferings" were immediately to precede 
His " glory " — and so it is not, after all, to be so much 
wondered at if the apparent approach of these made the 
settlement of their places in the impending kingdom seem 
to them a very pressing question. We should probably 
have thought so too, if we had been among them. 

Perhaps, too, the immediate occasion of this strife who 



2QJ THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST [serm. 

should be accounted the greatest, which drew from Christ 
the words of our text, may have been the unwillingness of 
each to injure his possible claim to pre-eminence by doing 
the servant's tasks at the modest meal. May we not 
suppose that the basin and the towel were refused by one 
after another, with muttered words growing louder and 
angrier : " It is not my place," says Peter ; " you, Andrew, 
take it" — and so from hand to hand it goes, till the 
Master ends the strife and takes it Himself to wash their 
feet Then, when He had sat down again, He may have 
spoken the words of which our text is part — in which He 
tells the wrangling disciples what is the true law of 
honour in His kingdom, namely, service, and points to 
Himself as the great example. With what emphasis the 
pathetic incident of the foot-washing invests the clause 
before our text : "I am among you as he that serveth." 
On that disclosure of the true law of pre-eminence in His 
kingdom there follows in this and following verses the 
assurance, that, unseemly as their strife, there was re- 
ward for them, and places of dignity there, because in all 
their selfishness and infirmity, they had still clung to 
their Master. 

This being the original purpose of these words, I venture 
to use them for another. They give us, if I mistake not, 
a wonderful glimpse into the heart of Christ, and a most 
pathetic revelation of His thoughts and experiences, all 
the more precious because it is quite incidental and, we 
may say, unconscious* 



xi.] IN HIS TEMPTATIONS. J03 

L See then, here, the tempted Christ 

In one sense, our Lord is His own perpetual theme. 
He is ever speaking of Himself, inasmuch as He is ever 
presenting what He is to us, and what He claims of us. 
In another sense, He scarcely ever speaks of Himself, 
inasmuch as deep silence, for the most part, lies over His 
own inward experiences. How precious, therefore, and 
how profoundly significant is that word here — "in My 
temptations" ! So He summed up all his life. To feel 
the full force of the expression, it should be remembered 
that the temptation in the wilderness was past before His 
first disciple attached himself to Him, and that the conflict 
in Gethsemane had not yet come when these words were 
spoken. The period to which they refer, therefore, lies 
altogether within these limits, including neither. After 
the former, " Satan," we read, " departed from Him for 
a season." Before the latter, we read, " the prince of 
this world cometh." The space between, of which people 
are so apt to think as free from temptation, is the time of 
which our Lord is speaking now. The time when His 
followers " companied with Him " is to His conscious- 
ness the time of His " temptations." 

That is not the point of view from which the Gospel 
narratives present it, for the plain reason that they are 
not autobiographies, and that Jesus said little about the 
continuous assaults to which He was exposed. It is 
not the point of view from which we often think of it 
We are too apt to conceive of Christ's temptations as all 
gathered together— <mrdled and clotted, as it were, at the 



204 THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST [serm. 

two ends of His life, leaving the space between free. But 
we cannot understand the meaning of that life, nor fed 
aright the love and help that breathe from it, unless we 
think of it as a field of continual and diversified temptations. 

How remarkable is the choice of the expression ! To 
Christ, His life, looking back on it, does not so much 
present itself in the aspect of sorrow, difficulty or pain, as 
in that of temptation. He looked upon all outward things 
mainly with regard to their power to help or to hinder 
His life's work. So for us, sorrow or joy should matter 
comparatively little. The evil in the evil should be fell 
to be sin, and the true cross and burden of life should be 
to us, as to our Master, the appeals it makes to us to 
abandon our tasks, and fling away our filial dependance 
and submission. 

This is not the place to plunge into the thorny ques- 
tions which surround the thought of the tempted Christ 
However these may be solved, the great fact remains, 
that His temptations were most real and unceasing. It 
was no sham fight which He fought The story of the 
wilderness is the story of a most real conflict ; and that 
conflict is waged all through his life. True, the traces 
of it are few. The battle was fought on both sides in 
grim silence, as sometimes men wage a mortal struggle 
without a sound. But if there were no other witness 
of the sore conflict, the Victor's shout at the close would 
be enough. His last words, " I have overcome the 
world," sound the note of triumph, and tell how sharp 
had been the strife. So long and hard had it been that 
He cannot forget it even in heaven, and from the throne 



XL] IN HIS TEMPTATIONS. 205 

holds forth to all the churches the hope of overcoming, 
"even as I also overcame." As on some battle-field 
whence all traces of the agony and fury have passed 
away, and harvests wave, and larks sing where blood ran 
and men groaned their lives out, some grey stone raised 
by the victors remains, and only the trophy tells of the 
forgotten fight, so that monumental word, " I have over- 
come " stands to all ages as the record of the silent, life- 
long conflict 

It is not for us to know how the sinless Christ was 
tempted. There are depths beyond our reach. This we 
can understand, that a sinless manhood is not above the 
reach of temptation ; and this besides, that, to such a 
nature, the temptations must be suggested from with- 
out, not presented from within. The desire for food is 
simply a physical craving, but another personality than 
His own uses it to incite the Son to abandon dependence 
for his physical life on God. The trust in God's pro- 
tection is holy and good, and it may be truest wisdom 
and piety to incur danger in dependence on it, when 
God's service calls, but a mocking voice without suggests, 
under the cloak of it, a needless rushing into peril at no 
call of conscience, and for no end of mercy, which is not 
religion but self-will. The desire to have the world for 
His own lay in Christ's deepest heart, but the enemy of 
Christ and man, who thought the world his already, used 
it as giving occasion to suggest a smoother and shorter 
road to win all men unto Him than the "Via dolorosa" 
of the Cross. So the sinless Christ was tempted at the 
beginning, and so the sinless Christ was tempted, in 



io6 THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST [serm. 

various forms of these first temptations, throughout His 
life. The path which He had to tread was ever before 
Him, the shadow of the Cross was flung along His road 
from the first The pain and sorrow, the shame and 
spitting, the contradiction of sinners against Himself, the 
easier path which needed but a wish to become His, the 
shrinking of flesh — all these made their appeal to Him, and 
every step of the path which He trod for us was trodden 
by the power of a fresh consecration of Himself to His 
task and a fresh victory over temptation. 

Let us not seek to analyse. Let us be content to 
worship, as we look. Let us think of the tempted Christ, 
that our conceptions of His sinlessness maybe increased. 
His was no untried and cloistered virtue, pure because 
never brought into contact with seducing evil, but a 
militant and victorious goodness, that was able to with- 
stand in the evil day. Let us think of the tempted Christ 
that our thankful thoughts of what He bore for us may be 
warmer and more adequate, as we stand afar off and look 
on at the mystery of His battle with our enemies and His. 
Let us think of the tempted Christ to make the lighter 
burden of our cross, and our less terrible conflict easier 
to bear and to wage. So will He " continue with us in 
our temptations," and patience and victory flow to us 
from Him. 

II. See here the lonely Christ. 

There is no aspect of our Lord's life more pathetic 
than that of His profound loneliness. I suppose the most 
utterly solitary man that ever lived was Jesus Christ I 



XL] IN HIS TEMPTATIONS. wj 

we think of the facts of His life, we see how His nearest 
kindred stood aloof from Him, how " there were none to 
praise, and very few to love ; " and how, even in the 
small company of His friends, there were absolutely none 
who either understood Him or sympathised with Him. 
We hear a great deal about the solitude in which men ot 
genius live, and how all great souls are necessarily lonely. 
That is true, and that solitude of great men is one of the 
compensations which run through all life, and make the 
lot of the many little, more enviable than that of the few 
great " The little hills rejoice together on every side," 
but far above their smiling companionships, the alpine 
peak lifts itself into the cold air, and though it be 
"^visited all night by troops of stars," is lonely amid the 
silence and the snow. Talk of the solitude of pure 
character amid evil, like Lot in Sodom, or of the loneli- 
ness of uncomprehended aims and unshared thoughts — 
who ever experienced that as keenly as Christ did? 
That perfect purity must needs have been hurt by the 
sin of men as none else have ever been. That loving 
heart yearning for the solace of an answering heart must 
needs have felt a sharper pang of unrequited love than 
ever pained another. That Spirit to which the things 
that are seen were shadows, and the Father and the 
Father's house the ever-present, only realities, must have 
felt itself parted from the men whose portion was in this 
life by a gulf broader than ever opened between any 
other two souls that shared together human life. 

The more pure and lofty a nature, the more keen its 
sensitiveness, the more exquisite its delights, and the 



sot THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST [skrm. 

sharper its pains. The more loving and unselfish a heart 
the more its longing for companionship : and the more 
its aching in loneliness. 

Very significant and pathetic axe many points in the 
Gospel story bearing on this matter. The very choice of 
the twelve had for its first purpose, " that they should be 
with Him," as one of the evangelists tells us. We know 
how constantly He took the three who were nearest to 
Him along with Him, and that surely not merely that 
they might be "eyewitnesses of His majesty" on the 
holy mount, or of His agony in Gethsemane, but as having 
a real gladness and strength even in their companionship 
amid the mystery of glory as amid the power of darkness. 
We read of His being alone but twice in all the gospels, 
and both times for prayer. And surely the dullest ear 
can hear a note of pain in that prophetic word : " The 
hour cometh that ye shall be scattered, every man to his 
own, and shall leave Me alone ; " while every heart must 
feel the pitiful pathos of the plea, " Tarry ye here, and 
watch with Me." Even in that supreme hour, He longs 
for human companionship, however uncomprehending, 
and stretches out His hands in the great darkness, to feel 
the touch of a hand of flesh and blood — and, alas, for poor 
feeble love ! — He gropes for it in vain. Surely that horror 
of utter solitude is one of the elements of His passion 
grave and sorrowful enough to be named by the side of 
the other bitterness poured into that cup, even as it was 
pain enough to form a substantive feature of the great 
prophetic picture : " I looked for some to take pity, but 
there was none ; and for comforters, but I found none." 



XL] IN HIS TEMPTA TIONS. 209 

So here, a deep pain in His loneliness is implied in 
these words of our text which put the disciples' partici- 
pation in the glories of His throne as the issue of their 
loyal continuance with Him in the conflict of earth. 
These, and these only, had been by His side, and so much 
does He care for their companionship, that therefore they 
shall share His dominion. 

That lonely Christ sympathises with all solitary hearts. 
If ever we feel ourselves misunderstood and thrown 
back upon ourselves ; if ever our hearts' burden of 
love is rejected; if our outward lives be lonely atnd 
earth yields nothing to stay our longing for companion- 
ship j if our hearts have been filled with dear ones and 
are now empty, or but filled with tears, let us think of 
Him and say, "Yet I am not alone." He lived alone, 
alone He died, that no heart might ever be solitary any 
more. " Could ye not watch with Me t " was His gentle 
rebuke in Gethsemane. "Lo, / am with you always," is 
His mighty promise from the throne. In every step of 
life we may have Him for a companion, a friend closer 
than all others, nearer us than our very selves, if we may 
so say — and in the valley of the shadow of death we need 
fear no evil, for He will be with us. 

III. See here the grateful Christ. 

I almost hesitate to use the word, but there seems a 
distinct ring of thanks in the expression, and in the 
connection. And we need not wonder at that, if we 
rightly understand it There is nothing In it inconsistent 
with our Lord's character and relations to His disciples, 

9 



210 THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST [serm. 

Do you remember another instance in which one seems 
to hear the same tone, namely, in the marked warmth 
with which He acknowledges the beautiful service of 
Mary in breaking the fragrant casket of nard upon his 
head? 

All true love is glad when it is met, glad to give, and 
glad to receive. Was it not a joy to Jesus to be waited 
on by the ministering woman? Would He not thank 
them because they served Him for love ? I trow, yes. 
And if any one stumbles at the word u grateful " as applied 
to Him, we do not care about the word so long as it is 
seen tnat His heart was gladdened by loving friends, and 
that He recognised in their society a ministry of love. 

Notice, too, the loving estimate of what these disciples 
had done. Their companionship had been imperfect 
enough at the best. They had given Him but blind 
affection, dashed with much selfishness. In an hour or 
two they would all have forsaken Him and fled. He 
knew all that was lacking in them, and the cowardly 
abandonment which was so near. But He has not a 
word to say of all this. He does not count jealously the 
flaws in our wort, or reject it because it is incomplete. 
So here is the great truth clearly set forth, that where 
there is a loving heart, there is acceptable service. It is 
possible that our poor, imperfect deeds shall be an odour 
of a sweet smell, acceptable, well-pleasing to Him. 
Which of us that is a father is not glad at his children's 
gifts, even though they be purchased with his own money, 
and be of little use? They mean love, so they are 
precious. And Christ, in like manner, gladly accepts 



xi.l IN HIS TEMPTATIONS. an 

what we bring, even though it be love chilled by selfish- 
ness, and faith broken by doubt, and submission crossed 
by self-will. The living heart of the disciples' acceptable 
service was their love, far less intelligent and entire than 
ours may be. They were joined to their Lord, though 
with but partial sympathy and knowledge, in His tempta- 
tions. It is possible for us to be joined to Jesus Christ 
more closely and more truly than they were during His 
earthly life. Union with Him here is union with Him 
hereafter. If we abide in Him amid the shows and 
shadows of earth, He will continue with us in our tempta- 
tions, and so the fellowship begun on earth will be per- 
fected in heaven : " If so be that we suffer with Him, that 
we may also be glorified together," 



SERMON XII. 

THE WELLS OF SALVATION. 

Isaiah xii 3. 
With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salratioa. 

T^WO events, separated from each other by fifteen 
■*■ hundred years, bear upon these words. One was 
the origin of the peculiar form of this prophecy, the othei 
contains its interpretation and claims to be its fulfil- 
ment 

The wandering march of the children of Israel had 
brought them to Rephidim, where there was no water. 
Their parched lips opened to murmur and rebel against 
their unseen Leader and his visible lieutenant At his 
wits' end, Moses cried to God, and the answer is the 
command to take with him the elders of Israel, and with 
his rod in his hand to go up to Horeb ; and then come 
grand words, " Behold, I will stand before thee there upon 
the rock, and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall 
come water out of it" It is not the rock, nor the rod, 
nor the uplifted hand, but it is the presence of God which 
makes the sparkling streams pour out. How the thirsty 
men would drink, how gladly they would fling themselvet 



serii. XIL] THE WELLS OF SAL VA TION. 113 

on the ground and glue their lips to the glancing blessing 
or dip their cups and skins into it, as it flashed 
along! 

Many a psalm and prophecy refer to this old story, 
and clearly Isaiah has it in his mind here, for the whole 
context is full of allusions to the history of the Exodus, 
as a symbol of the better deliverance from a worse 
bondage, which the " Root of Jesse " was to effect The 
lyric burst of praise, of which the text is part, carries on 
the same allusion. The joyful band of pilgrims returning 
from this captivity sing the " Song of Moses," chanted 
first by the banks of the Red Sea, "The Lord is my 
strength and song, and he is become my salvation. 19 
This distinct quotation, which immediately precedes our 
text, makes the reference in it which we have pointed 
out, most probable and natural. 

The connection of these words with the story in the 
Exodus was recognised by the Jews at a very early period, 
as is plain from their use in the remarkable ritual of the 
Feast of Tabernacles. That festival was originally ap- 
pointed to preserve the remembrance of Israel's nomad 
life in the wilderness. In the later days of the nation, a 
number of symbolical observances were added to those of 
the original institution. Daily, amidst loud jubilations, 
the priests wound in long procession down the slope from 
the Temple to the fountain of Siloam in the valley be- 
neath, and there drew water in golden urns. They bore 
it back, the crowd surging around them, and then amidst 
the blast of trumpets and a tumult of rejoicing, they 
poured it on the altar, while thousands of voices chanted 



214 THE WELLS OF SALVATION. [serm. 

Isaiah's words, " With joy shall ye draw water out of the 
wells of salvation." 

So much for the occasion of the prophecy, now far 
its meaning and fulfilment Nearly eight hundred years 
have passed Again the festival has come round* For 
seven days the glad ceremonial had been performed. 
For the last time the priestly procession has gone down 
the rocky road; for the last time the vases have been 
filled at the cool fountain below; for the last time the 
bright water has been poured out sparkling in the sun- 
light ; for the last time the shout of joy has risen and 
fallen, and as the words of the ancient chant were dying 
on the ear, a sudden stir began among the crowd, and 
from the midst of them, as they parted for his passage, 
came a young man, rustic in appearance, and there, before 
all the silence-stricken multitude, and priests with their 
empty urns, " In the last day, that great day of the feast, 
Jesus stood and cried, If any man thirst, let him come 
unto me," and drink. Surely such words, in such a con- 
nection, at such a time, from such lips, are meant to 
point the path to the true understanding of the text 

So then, consider what we have to understand by the 
wells of salvation. 

We are not to be content with any shallow and narrow 
interpretation of either idea in that phrase. No doubt 
" salvation " in the Old Testament often means merely 
outward deliverance from material peril. But there is 
surely a perceptible deepening of the meaning of the 
word in the mouth of this prophet, to whom was granted 



XII.] THE WELLS OF SALVATION. 215 

a nearer approximation to the light of the gospel both 
in respect of the Saviour and of His salvation, than had 
previously been given. We shall not strain his meaning 
here, if we take salvation almost in the fully developed 
New Testament sense, as including negatively the de- 
liverance from all evil, both evil of sin and evil of sorrow, 
and positively the endowment with all good, good both of 
holiness and happiness, which God can bestow or man 
receive. 

Then if so, God himself is, in the deepest truth, the 
Well of Salvation. We need only remind you that the 
figure of our text does not point to a well so much as to 
a spring. It is a source, not a reservoir. So we have 
but to recall the deep and wonderful words of the 
psalmist : " With thee is the fountain of life," and others 
not less profound, of the prophet, " They have forsaken 
me, the fountain of living waters," in order to be led up 
to the essential meaning of this text All the springs 
from which salvation, in any measure and in any form, 
flows to the thirsty lips of men are in God Himself. What 
grand truths that thought involves ! It declares that 
salvation has its origin in the depths of God's own nature. 
It wells up as of itself, not drawn forth by anything in us, 
but pouring out as from an inner impulse in His own deep 
heart God is His own motive, as His own end. As His 
Being, so His Love (which is His Being) is determined by 
nothing beyond Himself, but ever streams out by an energy 
from within, like the sunlight whose beams reach the limits 
of the system and travel on through dim dark distances, 
not because they are drawn by the planet, but because they 



ai6 THE WELLS OF SALVATION. [serm. 

arc urged from the central light Surely, too, if God be 
the fountain of salvation, the essence of salvation must be 
His communication of Himself. The water is the same 
in the fountain as in the pitcher. So, while salvation 
includes and gives rise to many another blessing both in 
this life and in the next, the very core and heart of it is, 
the possession of God Himself, filling our spirits and 
changing our whole nature into His own image. 

But, God being the true fountain of salvation, notice 
that Jesus Christ plainly and decisively puts Himself in 
the place that belongs to God : " If any man thirst, let 
him come unto me, and drink." Think of the extra- 
ordinary claims involved in that invitation. Here is & 
man who plants Himself over against the whole of the 
human race, and professes that He can satisfy every 
thirst of every soul through all the ages. Every craving 
of heart and mind, all longings for love and wisdom, for 
purity and joy, for strength and guidance, He assumes to 
be able to slake by the gift of Himselfc 

Moses sinned when he said, " Must we fetch water out 
of this rock ? " and expiated that sin t>y death. But his 
presumption was modesty compared with the unheard-of 
assumptions of the " meek and lowly " Christ There is 
but one hypothesis by which the character of Jesus can 
be saved, if He ever said anything like these words— -and 
that is that He who speaks them is God manifest in the 
flesh, the everlasting Son of the Father. 

One other remark may be made on this part of our 
subject The first word of our text carries us back to 
something preceding, on which the drawing water with 



xil.] THE WELLS OF SALVATION. 217 

joy is founded. That something is expressed immediately 
before : " The Lord Jehovah is my strength and song : 
He also is become my salvation." These words are 
quoted from Moses* song at the Red Sea, and there 
point to the one definite act by which God had saved the 
people from their pursuers. In like manner, we have to 
look to a definite historical act by which the fountain of 
salvation has been opened for us, and our glad drawing 
therefrom has been made possible. The mission and 
work of Jesus Christ, His incarnation, passion and death, 
are the means by which the sealed fountain has been 
opened. In these, or more truly in this, as one great 
whole, God becomes to us what in the depths of his 
Being He always was. The living stream is brought 
near. For men, Jesus Christ is as the river which flows 
from the closed and land-locked sea of the infinite Divine 
nature. He is for us the only source, the inexhaustible 
source, the perennial source — like some spring never hot 
or muddy, never frozen, never walled in, never sinking one 
hair's-breadth in its basin, though armies drink, and ages 
pass. " They drank of that Rock which followed them, 
and that Rock was Christ" So all the files of this moving 
host of men find the same spring beside them, where- 
soever they pitch, and the last of all the generations shall 
draw joy from the eternal fountain, Jesus Christ 1 

Consider, again, what is the way of drawing from the 
well of salvation. 

It is not difficult to come to a right understanding 
of the act which answers to this part of the metaphor. 



218 THE WELLS OF SALVATION. [skrm. 

People have given many answers to the question, If God 
be the fountain of salvation, how are we to get the water? 
If I may say so, pumps of all sorts have been tried, and 
there has been much weary working of arms at the 
handles, and much jangling of buckets and nothing 
brought up. The old word is true, with a new application 
to all who try in any shape to procure salvation by any 
work of their own : " Thou hast nothing to draw with, 
and the well is deep." But there is no need for all this 
profitless work. It is as foolish as it would be to spend 
money and pains in sinking a well in some mountainous 
country, where every hill-side is seamed with watercourses, 
and all that is needed is to put one end of any kind of 
wooden spout into the " burn " and your vessels under 
the other. The well of salvation is an Artesian well that 
needs no machinery to raise the water, but only pitchers 
to receive it as it rises. 

Christ has taught us what " drawing n is. To the 
Samaritan woman He said, u Tnou wouldst have asked of 
him, and he would have given thee living water." So, 
then, Drawing is Asking. To the crowds in the Tempi* 
courts He said, " Let him come unto me and drink." 
So, then, Drawing is Coming. To the listeners by the 
Sea of Galilee He said, " He that cometh to me shall 
never hunger ; and he that believeth on me shall never 
thirst" So Coming, Asking, Drawing, are all explained 
by Believing. To trust Christ is to come to Him. To 
trust Christ is to draw, and to trust Christ is to drink. 
Simple faith draws all God's goodness into the souL 

Now that faith which ifl thus powerful, must fix 



xil] THE WELLS OF SALVATION. 219 

and fasten on a definite historical act The faith 
which draws from the fountain of salvation is not a 
vague faith in generalities about God's goodness and the 
like, but it grasps God as revealed and becoming our 
salvation in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Nor 
is it a vague faith which has regard to Christ in his 
lovely character and perfect purity only, but one which 
lays hold on that great miracle of love perfected on 
the Cross where He bore our sins. In that wonderful 
discourse in which Christ proclaims Himself the Bread 
of Life, it is very instructive to note that He advances 
from the more general statement that life comes from 
eating of that bread which is Himself, to the more 
special and defined one, "Whoso eateth my flesh and 
drinketh my blood hath eternal life." Not merely 
Christ, but Christ crucified, is the food of our souls, 
the water of life. So then the drawing is faith, and 
that a faith which grasps the great sacrifice which Christ 
has made, as the channel whereby God's salvation comes 
near to each thirsty lip and drooping souL 

The words preceding our text suggest another charac- 
teristic of the faith which really draws water from the 
fountain : " He is become my salvation." That is to say, 
this believing grasp of Christ manifested in a definite 
historical act is an intensely personal thing. We are not 
merely to say " He is the Saviour of the world," but 
" He is my Saviour, He loved tnc t and gave Himself for 
me" We must lay hold of that love as embracing our- 
selves, and make our very own the treasure which 
belongs to all No general faith ia Christ's mercy # or ia 



uo THE WELLS OF SALVATION. [serm 

the atoning power of His Cross, will suffice to make us 
glad and to bow our souls in quick and quickening love. 
It must be something a great deal more personal than 
that : even the faith that His heart has love in it for me, 
that I am not lost in the crowd, nor forgotten in that 
abstraction, " the world," but that I had a place in His 
thought when He died, that I have a place in His heart 
while He lives. Thus making our own " the common 
salvation," and filling our own vessel at the great fountain. 
we shall have our own joy in the common gladness. 

Onsider too, thejey of the water drawers. 

The well is die meeting-place in these hot lands, 
where the solitary shepherds from the pastures and the 
maidens from the black camels' hair tents meet in the 
cool evening, and ringing laughter and cheery talk go 
round Or the allusion may be rather to the joy, as of 
escape from death, with which some exhausted travellers 
press towards the palm trees on the horizon that tell 
of a spring in the desert, and when they have reached it, 
crowd to the fountain and drink greedily ; no matter how 
hot and muddy it may be. 

So jubilant is the heart of the man whose soul is filled 
and feasted with the God of his salvation, and the salva- 
tion of his God. True Christianity is a joyful thing, not 
indeed with foolish laughter like the crackling of thorns 
under a pot, but with a joy too deep to be loud, too pure 
to be transient Such a man has all the sources and 
motives for joy which the heart can ask. Salvation 



xiij THE WELLS OF SALVATION. 221 

unfolds into manifold gladnesses — rare and profound 
There is in it forgiveness, which makes us " hear joy and 
gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may 
rejoice. w There is companionship with God and Christ, 
and such society makes "our hearts burn within us." 
There is obedience to His will, and then His statutes 
become the " joy of our hearts." There is a bright hope 
beyond, and " in that hope of the glory of God we can 
ejoice." We are independent of externals, possessing 
Jut which no change can affect and of which nothing 
can bereave us. So we can sing the old song : " Though 
the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the 
vines, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the 
God of my salvation." How different the false and 
fleeting joys of earth, when men resort to their broken 
cisterns that can hold no water. The grim words of 
the prophet are only too true about all other springs of 
gladness : " They came to the pits, and found no water ; 
they xeturned with their vessels empty. They were 
ashamed and confounded, and covered their heads." 

That ^Teat Lord and Lover of all our souls calls to 
each of vw now, as He did to the men of His generation, 
when He aras on earth. To them He stretched out His 
hospitable arms as He stood in the Temple court and cried, 
" If any mm thirst, let him come unto me and drink. " 
To us He speaks from heaven, in the great words which 
all but clo.*e the volume of revelation : " Let him that 
is athirst cume, and whosoever will, let him take the 
water of life freely." May each of us answer, " Sir, give 
me this water, that I thirst not, neither come to earth's 
broken cisterns to draw." 



SERMON XII!. 

SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. 

Psalm xxvii. 8, 9. 

When thou saidst, Seek ye my face ; my heart said unto thee, Thy 
face, Lord, will I seek. Hide not Thy face far from me. 

H^HERE appears to be a good deal of autobiography 
-** in this psalm. The writer, whom we take to be 
David, travels back in thought to the past of his life, and 
his backward glance fixes on two distinct objects. At 
ene time he thinks of the past as God's past, all illumined 
by the radiance of His favour, and helped by the might 
of His imparted strength ; and at another, he thinks of it 
as his own past, wherein he strove to love and serve his 
keeper God ; and from both of these aspects of the days 
that are gone he draws encouragement to hope that God 
will be the same, and humbly resolves that he, for his 
part, will continue the habit of trust and obedience. For 
instances of the remembrance of God's past, we may take 
the words which follow this text, " Thou hast been my 
help ; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my 
salvation," and the other reference to the signal deliver- 
ance ol his early years, which is often unnoticed by 



SERM.XHI.] SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. 333 

ordinary readers, " When the wicked, even mine enemies 
and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they 
stumbled and fell n (ver. 2). The expressions recall the 
braggart boast of Goliath, u I will give thy flesh unto the 
fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field/' and the 
vivid picture of the end of the fight, when the stones went 
crashing into the thick skull of the bully, "and he fell 
upon his face to the earth." As instance of his retrospect 
of the past as his, take such words as these, " One thing 
have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after," or, " I 
had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of 
the Lord in the land of the living." Here, in these words 
of our text, these two ways of looking at the past are 
woven into one strong cord, that the Psalmist may hang 
his confidence and his prayers thereon. What God has 
been saying to him in days that are no more, and what he 
has been saying to God, are planted like the two piers of 
an arch, that from them may rise heavenwards the prayer 
and the hope, " Hide not thy face far from me ; " " Leave 
me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation." 
Happy they who can look back on years made fair by 
God's recognised gifts and their own loving obedience, 
and who can feel that what God has been to them, and 
what they have been to God, has stamped their lives with 
an impress to which all the future will be true I Happy 
they if their forward look is a prayer offered in lowliness, 
and not a boast made in presumption ! We have here 
then God's voice to the heart, the heart's echo to that 
voice, and the heart's cry to God, founded on both the 
Divine voice and the human echo. 



234 SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. [serm. 



There is here, first, Goets voice to the heart. 

There may be some difficulties about the rendering 
of our text, which, however, need not concern us now. 
Our English version is sufficient for our present purpose, 
and, according to it, we have here, as it were, summed 
up in a kind of dialogue of two phrases, the whole speech 
of God to us men, and the inmost meaning of all that 
devout souls say to God. "Seek ye my face n — such is 
the essential meaning of all God's words and works, 
"Thy face, Lord, will I seek" — such is the essentia! 
meaning of all prayer, worship, and obedience. 

But let us observe a little more closely what the 
Psalmist means by that phrase, "Seeking God's face." 
It needs to be translated into a more modern dialect, in 
order to convey much meaning to some of us. We may 
begin then by asking the significance of that expression, 
"the face of God." 

It is one of those strong Scripture phrases which escape 
any danger of misconstruction by the very boldness of 
their corporeal metaphors. The highest and most 
spiritual conception of God is reached, not by a pedantic 
scrupulosity in avoiding material representations, but by 
an unhesitating use of these, and the remembrance that 
they are representations. The unsubstantial abstraction 
of the metaphysical God, described only in terms as far 
removed as may be from human analogies, for fear of 
being guilty of "anthropomorphism," never helped of 
gladdened any human sod. It is but a bit of mist through 
which you can see the stars shining. But the God whom 



xiil.] SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. 22$ 

men need and can know and love, the God who it a 
Spirit, comes near to us in descriptions cast in the mould 
of humanity, and loses none of His purely Spiritual 
essence, nor any of His Infinitude, because we have 
learned to speak of the eye, and arm, and the hand, and 
the heart, and the face of the Lord. The more unmis- 
takably "gross" and u carnal " the representations, the 
more do they proclaim their true character, and the less 
danger of their being misunderstood. The eye of the 
Lord is His all-seeing knowledge ; the arm and the hand 
of the Lord are substantially the same, though with certain 
shades of difference in the ideas which they suggest, and 
may be said to express the active energy of the Divine 
nature. The face of the Lord, we may say, is that 
aspect or side of the divine nature which is turned to 
man, and is perceptible by him. It is, roughly speaking, 
almost equivalent to "the name of the Lord." That 
expression has a much profounder meaning than is 
ordinarily felt to belong to it It means the manifested 
character of God, the net result of all His self-revelation 
by word and work. And so these two phrases — the face 
of the Lord and the name oftht Lord y come to nearly the 
same thing. Both of them are worth noting for one 
reason besides others — namely, that they bring out into 
clear prominence the twin facts, that there is that in God 
which may be known, and also that which cannot be. 
Whilst once or twice in the Old Testament " the face of 
God M is used to express the dazzling brightness of His 
essential being, which no man can look on, it more 
usually means the knowable part of the Divine nature, 

Q 



226 SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. [serm. 

and, like the other phrase which we have compared with 
it, draws a broad distinction between that and the un- 
knowable depths — the unspeakable in God. We see the 
radiant brightness of the full moon, but no eye has ever 
beheld the other side of that pure silver shield So the 
simple expression of our text keeps us from the twin 
errors of supposing that we can know nothing of God, 
and of forgetting that we can know but an aspect and a 
side of His nature. 

It may be further noticed that another idea is usually 
connected with the expression — namely that of light 
The face of God is thought of as the sun, and so we read 
" Lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us," and 
other similar passages, in which the two ideas of the rising 
of the sun on an else dark world, and the rising of the 
Divine countenance on else dark and wintry hearts are 
paralleled. All thoughts, then, of brightness, of clear 
illumination, of gladness and knowledge, of favour and 
warmth, cluster round the emblem ; and of the Jehovah 
of the Old Testament, as of the glorified Christ of the 
New, it may be said, " His countenance was as the sun 
shineth in his strength." 

If these things be true, then we may learn what it is 
to " seek His face." We do not need long and painful 
search, as for something lost in dim darkness, in order to 
find the sun. We do not need to seek the sun with 
lanterns ; nor to grope after God if haply we may find 
Him. A man need only come out of his dark hiding-place 
to find it If he will but turn his face to the light, the 
glory will brighten his features and make glad his eyes. 



XIII.] SEEKING THE FACE OF COD. ttf 

And in like manner, to seek God's face is no long, 
dubious search, nor is He hard to be found We have 
only to desire to possess — and to act in harmony with 
the desire — and we shall walk all the day in the light of 
His countenance.' Count the knowledge of God and the 
experience of His sunny favour as more than all other 
treasures of wisdom or delights of love or lower things. 
" There be many that say, Who will show us any good ? " 
and the search is vain, even because it has no clear 
knowledge of what is good, and seeks to make up for the 
limitations of its possessions by their multitude. " Lord, 
lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us." That 
is the one pearl of great price, for which all the frag- 
mentary and partial preciousnesses of many goodly pearls 
are wisely exchanged. Endeavour to keep vivid the 
consciousness of that face as looking always in on you, 
like the solemn frescoes of the Christ which Angelico 
painted on the walls of his convent cells, that each poor 
brother might feel His Master ever with him. Make Him 
your companion, and then, though you may feel the awe 
of the thought, " Thou hast set our secret sins in the light 
of Thy countenance," you will find a joy deeper than the 
awe, and learn the blessedness of those, sinful though 
they may be, who walk in the full brightness of that face. 
Let Him be the object of your thoughts, and more and 
more of your whole nature. Let feeling and desire, 
affection and will, mind and work, all turn to Him, taking 
Him for motive and end, for strength and means, and 
turning all your being towards Him as the sunflower turns 
to follow the sun. Scrupulously avoid whatever might 



-8 SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. [SERM. 

Jim the vision of His face. An invisible vapour may 
hide a star, and we only know that the film is in the 
nightly sky because Jupiter, which was blazing a moment 
ago, has become dim or has disappeared. So fogs and 
vapours from the undrained swamps of our own selfish, 
worldly hearts may rob the thought of God of all its genial 
lustre, and make it an angry ball of fire, or may hide 
Him altogether from us ; and we cannot be seeking Him 
and earthly things any more than we can serve God and 
Mammon. 

If this be the meaning of seeking God's face, then note 
that this invitation is God's merciful voice to us alL 
Whether the Psalmist is thinking about any special time 
or way in which God so spoke to him does not appear. 
Rather, we may suppose that he is summing up the 
meaning of the whole of God's dealings with him in the 
past However that may be, it is true that God thus 
speaks to each of us, and that we may even say He speaks 
thus only to us. By the revelation to us of His own 
beauty and wonderful fitness to satisfy the hunger of our 
souls, He is wooing us to seek His face. So infinitely 
fair and good is He, that to make Himself visible is to 
draw us to Himself. To know Him is to love Him, and 
the heart of all His self-revelation by speech and deed is 
the gracious call to come to His brightness and be at rest 
By the very make of our spirits, which bear on them 
alike in their weakness and their strength the sign that 
they are His, and can only be at rest in Him, He says, 
' Seek ye my face." By all His providences of joy or 
sorrow, by disappointments and fulfilments, by hopes and 



xhi.] SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. 229 

fruitions, by losses and gains, by all the alternation! which 
44 toss us to His breast," He says, u Seek ye my face/' 
In all that befalls us our purged ears may hear " the great 
voice saying, Come up thither." And most of all in 
Jesus Christ, the true " angel of His face," in whom all 
the lustre of His radiance is gathered, does He beckon us 
to Himself. The highest, most loving, most beseeching 
form of that wonderful invitation, " Seek ye my face," is 
the call of Him in whose face we see the glory of God as 
we see it nowhere besides : " Come unto me, all ye that 
labour and are heavy laden; 99 So He speaks to the whole 
world. So He speaks to each of us. So He speaks to 
me by Christ, who is the dearest utterance of His love 
and the express image of His person, 

IL We have here the hearts echo to the voice of God. 
" My heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek." 
Swift and immediate, as the thunder to the lightning, the 
answer follows the invitation. If the resolve to seek 
God's face be not made by us at the very moment when 
we become aware of His loving call, it is very unlikely to 
be made at all The first notes of that low voice fall on 
the heart with more persuasive power than they retain 
after it has become familiar with them, even as the first- 
heard song of the thrush in spring-time, that breaks the 
long wintry silence, has a sweetness all its own. The 
echo answers as soon as the mother voice ceases. But 
how many of us hesitate and delay, and content ourselves 
with intentions to answer, and so by lapse of time lose 
our very consciousness that God is speaking to us at all 



330 SEEKING THE FACE OF COD. [serm. 

Some of us are as dead to the perception of His gracious 
call, just because it has been sounding on uninterruptedly, 
as are the dwellers by the waterfall to its unremitting 
voice. And it is always dangerous to delay for one 
moment the uprising of the heart in any resolution which 
we know to be right. Any unnecessary interval inter- 
posed between the perception of duty and the doing of 
duty weakens the perception and the resolution as well, 
and lowers the whole tone of a man. So do not let us 
tolerate any lingering hesitation in ourselves in yielding 
to the Divine summons. The only safety, the only peace 
lies in prompt obedience and in an immediate answer. 

There is also brought out here very plainly the complete 
correspondence between the Divine command and the 
devout man's resolve. Word for word the invitation is 
repeated in the answer. This man's obedience is no 
partial obedience. He does not take part of God's call 
and yield to that, leaving the rest to be dispersed in 
empty air, but all the breadth and depth of the message 
that comes to him from God is contained in his an- 
nouncement of his purpose. Like the sailor at the tiller, 
he answers his captain's directions by repeating them. 
" Port," says the officer. " Port it is," says the steersman. 
"Seek ye my face." "Thy face will I seek." The 
correspondence in words means the correspondence in 
action and the thorough-going obedience. How unlike 
the half-and-half seeking, the languid search, as of people 
listlessly looking for something which they do not much 
expect to find, and do not much care whether they find 
or no, which characterises so many so-called Christians I 



xin.] SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. 331 

They are seekers after God, are they? Yes, with less 
eagerness than they would seek for a sovereign if it rolled 
from their fingers into the mud. And so need we 
wonder that so may of us have but little consciousness 
of a found God to brighten our lives? "Seek, and ye 
shall find" is ever true, thank God, but it must be a 
whole-hearted seeking, and not the feeble, flickering desire 
and the listless action which mark so many of us. 

Note, too, the firm and decisive resolution shining 
through the very brevity of the words. The original 
gives that brevity even more strongly. Three words 
suffice to hold the law which the man has made for the 
pole-star of his life. Fixed resolves need short professions. 
A Spartan brevity, as of a man with his lips tightly locked 
together, is fitting for such purposes. It is the waverers, 
who have more than one end in view, or the feeble-willed 
who try to brace themselves up by talking, making a 
fence of words around them, who are profuse in their 
vows. The sober temperament, that measures difficulties 
and knows the tenacity as well as the gravity of its 
determination, keeps its breath for the struggle, and does 
not waste it on blowing the trumpet beforehand. If we 
are quite resolved that our life's business is to be seeking 
God's face, we shall for the most part say little about it 

What a contrast that clear, self-conscious, firm reso- 
lution is to the hesitations and indecisions so common 
among us 1 How few of us could honestly crystallize the 
aims that guide our life into any single sentence! 
How much fewer there are who could do it in that sen- 
tence t We try the impossible feat of riding on two horses 



33* SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. [serm. 

at once. We resolve and retract, and hesitate and com- 
promise. The ship heads now one way and now another, 
and that not because we are wisely tacking — that is to say, 
seeking to reach one point by widely-varying courses — 
but because our hand is so weak on the helm that we 
drift wherever the wash of the waves and the buffets of 
the wind carry us. 

Further, we have in this heart's echo to the voice of 
God the conversion of a general invitation into a personal 
resolution. 

The call is, u Seek ye" The answer is, " /will seek." 
That is what we have all to do with God's words. He 
sows His invitations broadcast ; we have to make them 
our own. He sends out His mercy for a world ; we have 
to claim each our portion. He issues His commands to 
all; I have to make them the law for my life. The 
stream flows deep and broad from the throne of God, 
and parts into four heads, the number expressive of 
universal diffusion throughout the world ; but I have to 
bring it into my own garden by my own trench, and to 
carry it to my own lip in my own cup. The gospel tells 
as that Christ died for the world; I have to "appro- 
priate " that, as our fathers used to name it, by saying 
He gave Himself for me. So when that merciful voice 
comes to us there must be, each for himself, a personal 
response to it " Seek ye my face." Let us each reply, 
* Thy face, Lord, will /seek." 

Nothing in all the world is so blessed as to hear that 
wonderful beseeching call sounding in every providence, 
*a veiling to us from every corner of the universe, speak* 



xiil] SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. 233 

ing to us in the light of setting suns and in the hush of 
midnight skies, sounding in the break of waves on the 
beach and in the rustle of leaves in the forest depths, 
whispering to us in the depths of our own hearts and 
wooing us by all things to our rest Everything assumes 
a new meaning and is appareled in celestial light when 
we are aware that everything is a messenger from God to 
guide us to Himself. And nothing is so joyous as to 
yield to that most tender summons, while on the other 
hand, its non-acceptance breeds and brings discord and 
unrest into our whole being. To stifle it wholly is im- 
possible, conscience will ever and again stir. When we 
feel most secure, and have deadened our ears most 
effectually, as we think, some word or look, a chance 
line in a book, a sunset, a phrase in a sermon, the 
meeting of a funeral, some fleeting gladness, sets the 
chords vibrating again. So there is constant inward 
strife, or, if not, so much the worse ; for the man who 
has lost the capacity of discerning God's voice has lost 
the most of what ennobles his nature. But that is heaven 
on earth, nobleness, peace, and power, to stand as at the 
point of some great ellipse, to which converge from all 
sides the music of God's manifold invitations, and listen- 
ing to them to say, I hear, and I obey. Thou dost call, 
and I answer, Lo I here am I. 

III. The third bend in the stream of thought here is the 
hearts cry to God founded on both the Divine voice and the 
human echo. 

44 Hide not thy face far from me" is clearly a prayer 



234 SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. [serm, 

built upon both these elements in the past God's in- 
vitation, and my acceptance of it, both give me the right 
to pray thus, and are pledges of the answer. 

As to the former, " Thou saidst, Seek ye my face n — 
" hide not thy face from me " is but the vivid way of 
putting the thought that God cannot contradict Himself. 
His commandments are promises. " Thou shalt " is but 
the hard, rough shell which covers a sweet " I will " from 
His lips. If He bids us seek His face, He thereby 
pledges Himself to show us His face. He binds Himself 
to us by His commandments ; and, in that sense too, as 
well as in others, His law is a covenant, placing Him 
under obligations, even as it does us. He recognises the 
force of the plea upon our lips, and owns that we prevail 
when we urge it He can point with majestic self-vindi- 
cation to all the records of the past, and assert, " I have 
never said to the seed of Jacob, Seek ye my face in 
vain." So we may build an unshaken confidence on His 
unchangeable fidelity to the obligation under which He 
comes by sending forth such a summons. Be sure that 
God never calls us to a feast and sets before us an empty 
table, when we take Him at His word and come. His 
past is the guarantee and pattern for His future. Has 
He bid me seek His face ? Then He cannot hide His 
face from me, nor say me nay when I beseech Him to 
lift up its light upon me. 

As to the second ground of this prayer, it rests on my 
past as well as on God's. " Thy face will I seek— hide 
not thy face from me." That is the confidence that 
because we seek we shall find. My feeblest desire brings 



XIIL] SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. 33$ 

answers correspondent to its strength and purity. It 
cannot be that any man ever truly longed to know God 
and was balked of his wish. You may have exactly a» 
much of God as you want ; as much, that is, as you can 
hold, as much as the ordering of your lives makes it 
possible that we should possess. There is no limit to 
our consciousness of God's loving presence and help, 
except that drawn by ourselves. He fills the vessels we 
bring, be they large or small And there is no possibility 
of any longing after Him remaining unsatisfied. No 
hunger of heart, no aching emptiness, no eyes failing 
with looking for the visitor who never comes, no pining 
away in sick disappointment, have any place in the 
relation of the soul to God. So sufficient is He, so near, 
so infinitely desirous to impart Himself, that He needs 
but the narrowest opening to pour His fulness into the 
heart Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after 
God, for they shall be filled. He does not hold out a 
gift with one hand and then twitch it away with the 
other when we try to grasp, as children do with light 
reflected from a looking-glass on a wall That fair face 
does not elude us when we try to look on it, but to seek 
is to find, to wish for God is to have God. 

" Seek His face evermore/' and your life will be bright 
because you will walk in the light of His countenance 
always. That face will brighten the darkness of death, 
and "make a sunshine in that shady place." As you 
pass through the dark valley it will shine in upon you, 
as the sun looks through the savage gorge in the 
Himalayas, above which towers that strange mountain 



*3* SEEKING THE FACE OF GOD. [SER1L XIIL 

which is pierced right through with a circular aperture ; 
and when you reach the land beyond you will enter it 
with the wonderful hope on your lips, "As for me, I 
shall behold tHy face in righteousness," and heaven's 
heaven will be that " His servants serve Him and see 
His fact, 19 



SERMON XIV. 

CITIZENS OF HEAVEN, 

Philip. 1 27, 28. 

Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ t 
that whether I come and see yon, or else be absent, I may hear 
of yonr affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind 
striving together for the faith of the gospel ; and in nothing 
terrified by your adversaries. 

11TE read in the Acts of the Apostles that PhUippi 
v v was the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and 
a "colony." Now, the connection between a Roman 
colony and Rome was a great deal closer than that 
between an English colony and England It was, in 
fact, a bit of Rome on foreign soiL 

The colonists and their children were Roman citizens. 
Their names were enrolled on the lists of Roman tribes. 
They were governed not by the provincial authorities, 
but by their own magistrates, and the law to which they 
owed obedience was not that of the locality, but the law 
of Rome. 

No doubt some of the Philippian Christians possessed 
these privileges. They knew what it was to live in a 
community to which they were less closely bound than 



zj8 CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. [serm. 

to the great city beyond the sea. They were members 
of a mighty polity, though they had never seen its 
temples nor trod its streets. They lived in Philippi, but 
they belonged to Rome. Hence there is a peculiar 
significance in the first words of our text The render- 
ing, " conversation," was inadequate even when it was 
made. It has become more so now. The word then 
meant " conduct" It now means little more than words. 
But though the phrase may express loosely the Apostle's 
general idea, it loses entirely the striking metaphor under 
which it is couched. The Revised Version gives the 
literal rendering in its margin — " Behave as citizens "-^ 
though it adopts in its text a rendering which disregards 
the figure in the word, and contents itself with the less 
picturesque and vivid phrase — " let your manner of life 
be worthy." But there seems no reason for leaving out 
the metaphor ; it entirely fits in with the purpose of the 
apostle and with the context 

The meaning is, Play the citizen in a manner worthy 
of the gospel Paul does not, of course, mean, Dis- 
charge your civic duties as Christian men, though some 
Christian Englishmen need that reminder; but the city ot 
which these Philippians were citizens was the heavenly 
Jerusalem, the metropolis, the mother city of us alL He 
would kindle in them the consciousness of belonging 
to another order of things than that around them. He 
would stimulate their loyalty to obedience to the city's 
laws. As the outlying colonies of Rome had sometimes 
entrusted to them the task of keeping the frontiers and 
extending the power of the imperial city, so he stirs them 



xiv.] CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. 239 

up to aggressive warfare ; and as in all their conflicts the 
little colony felt that the Empire was at its back, and 
therefore looked undaunted on shoals Of barbarian foes, 
so he would have his friends at Philippi animated by lofty 
courage, and ever confident of final victory. 

Such seems to be a general outline of these eager 
exhortations to the citizens of heaven in this outlying 
colony of earth. Let us think of them briefly in order 
now. 

I. Keep fresh the sense of belonging to the mother city. 

Paul was not only writing to Philippi, but from Rome, 
where he might see how, even in degenerate days, the 
consciousness of being a Roman gave dignity to a man, 
and how the idea became almost a religion. He would 
kindle a similar feeling in Christians. 

We do belong to another polity or order of things than 
that with which we are connected by the bonds of flesh 
and sense. Our true affinities are with the mother city. 
True, we are here on earth, but far beyond the blue 
waters is another community, of which we are truly 
members, and sometimes in calm weather we can see, if 
we climb to a height above the smoke of the valley where 
we dwell, the faint outline of the mountains of that other 
land, lying dream-like on the opal waves, and bathed in 
sunlight 

Therefore it is a great part of Christian discipline to 
keep a vivid consciousness that there is such an unseen 
order of things at present in existence. We speak 
popularly of " the future life," and are apt to forget that 



240 CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. [serm. 

it is also the present life to an innumerable company. 
In fact, this film of an earthly life floats in that greater 
sphere which is all around it, above, beneath, touching it 
at every point 

It is, as Peter says * ready to be unveiled." Yes, 
behind the thin curtain, through which stray beams of 
the brightness sometimes shoot, that other order stands, 
close to us, parted from us by a most slender division, 
only a woven veil, no great gulf or iron barrier. And, 
before long His hand will draw it back, rattling with its 
rings as it is put aside, and there will blaze out what has 
always been, though we saw it not It is so close, so 
real, so bright, so solemn, that it is worth while to try to 
feel its nearness; and we are so purblind, and such 
foolish slaves of mere sense, shaping our lives on the 
legal maxim that things which are non-apparent must be 
treated as non-existent, that it needs a constant effort 
not to lose the feeling altogether. 

There is a present connection between all Christian 
men and that heavenly City. It not merely exists, 
but we belong to it in the measure in which we are 
Christians. All these figurative expressions about our 
citizenship being in heaven and the like, rest on the 
simple fact that the life of Christian men on earth and 
in heaven is fundamentally the same. The principles 
which guide, the motives which sway, the tastes and 
desires, affections and impulses, the objects and aims, 
are substantially one. A Christian man's true affinities 
are with the things not seen, and with the persons there, 
however the surface relationships knit him to the earth. 



xiv.] CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. 241 

In the degree in which he is a Christian, he is a stranger 
here and a native of the heavens. That great City is, 
like some of the capitals of Europe, built on a broad 
river, with the mass of the metropolis on the one bank, 
but a wide-spreading suburb on the other. As the 
Trastevere is to Rome, as Southwark to London, so is 
earth to heaven, the bit of the city on the other side the 
bridge. As Philippi was to Rome, so is earth to heaven, 
the colony on the outskirts of the empire, ringed round 
by barbarians, and separated by sounding seas, but 
keeping open its communications, and one in citizenship. 
Be it our care, then, to keep the sense of that city 
beyond the river vivid and constant Amid the shows 
and shams of earth look ever onward to the realities, 
" the things which are" while all else only seems to be. 
The things which are seen are but smoke wreaths, 
floating for a moment across space, and melting into 
nothingness while we look. We do not belong to them 
or to the order of hings to which they belong. There 
is no kindred between us and them. Our true relation- 
ships are elsewhere. In this present visible world all 
other creatures find their sufficient and home-like abode. 
" Foxes have holes, and birds their roosting-places ;" but 
man alone has not where to lay his head, aor can he 
find in all the width of the created universe a place in 
which and with which he can be satisfied. Our true 
habitat is elsewhere. So let us set our thoughts and 
affections on things above. The descendants of the 
original settlers in our colonies talk still of coming to 
England as going " home," though they were born in 

ft 



24a CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. [serm. 

Australia, and have lived there all their lives. In like 
manner we Christian people should keep vigorous in our 
minds the thought that our true home is there where we 
have never been, and that here we are foreigners and 
wanderers. 

Nor need that feeling of detachment from the present 
sadden our spirits, or weaken our interest in the things 
around us. To recognise our separation from the order 
of things in which we "move," because we belong to 
that majestic unseen order in which we really " have our 
being," makes life great and not smalL It clothes the 
present with dignity beyond what is possible to it if it be 
not looked at in the light of its connection with "the 
regions beyond." From that connection life derives all 
its meaning. Surely nothing can be conceived more 
unmeaning, more wearisome in its monotony, more 
tragic in its joy, more purposeless in its efforts, than 
man's life, if the life of sense and time be alL Truly it 
is " like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
signifying nothing." " The white radiance of eternity " 
streaming through it from above gives all its beauty to 
the "dome of many-coloured glass" which men call life. 
They who feel most their connection with the city which 
hath foundations should be best able to wring the last 
drop of pure sweetness out of all earthly joys, to under- 
stand the meaning of all events, and to be interested 
most keenly, because most intelligently and most nobly, 
in the homeliest and smallest of the tasks and concerns 
of the present 

So, fu all things, act as citizens of the great Motuer of 



xiv.] CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. 243 

heroes and saints beyond the sea. Ever feel that you 
belong to another order, and let the thought, " Here we 
have no continuing city," be to you not merely the bitter 
lesson taught by the transiency of earthly joys and 
treasures and loves, but the happy result of " seeking for 
the city which hath the foundations." 

II. Another exhortation which our text gives is, Live 
by the laws of the city. 

The Philippian colonists were governed by the code 
of Rome. Whatever might be the law of the province 
of Macedonia, they owed no obedience to it So 
Christian men are not to be governed by the maxims 
and rules of conduct which prevail in the province, but 
to be governed from the capital. We ought to get from 
on-lookers the same character that was given to the Jews, 
that we are " a people whose laws are different from ail 
people that be on earth," and we ought to reckon such a 
character our highest praise. Paul would have these 
Philippian Christians act " worthy of the gospel? That 
is our law. 

The great good news of God manifest in the flesh, and 
of our salvation through Christ Jesus, is not merely to be 
believed, but to be obeyed. The gospel is not merely a 
message of deliverance, it is also a rule of conduct It 
is not merely theology, it is also ethics. like some of 
the ancient municipal charters, the grant of privileges 
and proclamation of freedom is also the sovereign code 
which imposes duties and shapes life. A gospel of 
laziness and mere exemption from hell was not Paul's 

R • 



244 CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. [SIR* 

f ospcl. A gospel of doctrines, to be investigated, gpun 
into a system of theology, and accepted by the under- 
standing, and there an end, was not Paul's gospel He 
believed that the great facts which he proclaimed con- 
cerning the self-revelation of God in Christ would unfold 
into a sovereign law of life for every true believer, and 
so his one all-sufficient precept and standard of conduct 
are in these simple words, " worthy of the gospel." 

That law is all-sufficient In the truths which con- 
stituted Paul's gospel, that is to say, in the truths of the 
life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, lies all that 
men need for conduct and character. In Him we have 
the " realised ideal," the flawless example, and instead of 
a thousand precepts, for us all duty is resolved into one 
— be like Christ In Him we have the mighty motive, 
powerful enough to overcome all forces that would draw 
us away, and like some strong spring to keep us in 
closest contact with Right and Goodness. Instead of a 
confusing variety of appeals to manifold motives of 
interest and conscience, and one knows not what beside, 
we have the one all-powerful appeal, " If ye love me, 
keep my commandments," and that draws all the 
agitations and fluctuations of the soul after it, as the 
rounded fullness of the moon does the heaped waters in 
the tidal wave that girdles the world. In Him we have 
all the helps that weakness needs, for He Himself will 
come and dwell with us and in us, and be our righteous- 
ness and our strength. 

Live " worthy of the gospel," then. How grand the 
unity and simplicity thus breathed into our duties and 



xiv.] CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. 245 

through our lives ! All duties are capable of reduction 
to this one, and though we shall still need detailed 
instruction and specific precepts, we shall be set free 
from the pedantry of a small scrupulous casuistry, which 
fetters men's limbs with microscopic bands, and shall 
joyfiilly learn how much mightier and happier is the life 
which is shaped by one fruitful principle, than that which 
is hampered by a thousand regulations. 

Nor is such an all-comprehensive precept a mere 
toothless generality. Let a man try honestly to shape 
his life by it ; and he will find soon enough how close it 
grips him, and how wide it stretches and how deep it 
goes. The greatest principles of the gospel are to be 
fitted to the smallest duties. Indeed that combination — 
great principles and small duties — is the secret of all 
noble and calm life, and nowhere should it be so beauti- 
fully exemplified as in the life of a Christian man. The 
tiny round of the dew-drop is shaped by the same laws 
that mould the giant sphere of the largest planet You 
cannot make a map of the poorest grassfield without 
celestial observations. The star is not too high nor too 
brilliant to move before us and guide simple men's feet 
along their pilgrimage. "Worthy of the gospel" is a 
most practical and stringent law. 

And it is an exclusive commandment too, shutting out 
obedience to other codes, however common and fashion- 
able they may be. We are governed from home, and we 
give no submission to provincial authorities. Never mind 
what people say about you, nor what may be the maxims 
and ways of men around you. These are no guides fot 



346 CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. [SERM. 

you. Public opinion (which only means for most of us the 
hasty judgments of the half-dozen people who happen 
to be nearest us), use and wont, the customs of our set, 
the notions of the world about duty, all these we have 
nothing to do with. The censures or the praise of men 
need not move us. We report to headquarters, and 
subordinates' estimate need be nothing to us. Let us 
then say, " With me it is a very small matter that I should 
be judged of men's judgment He that judgeth me is 
the Lord." When we may be misunderstood or harshly 
dealt with, let us lift our eyes to the lofty seat where the 
Emperor sits, and remove ourselves from men's sentences 
by our " appeal unto Caesar," and, in all varieties of 
circumstances and duty, let us take the gospel which is 
the record of Christ's life, death, and character, for our 
only law, and labour that, whatever others may think of 
us, we " may be well pleasing to him." 

III. Further, our text bids the colonists fight for the 
advance of the dominions of the city. — Like the armed 
colonists whom Russia and other empires had on their 
frontier, who received their bits of land on condition of 
holding the border against the enemy, and pushing it 
forward a league or two when possible, Christian men 
are set down in their places to be "wardens of the 
marches," citizen soldiers who hold their homesteads on 
a military tenure, and are to "strive together for the faith 
of the gospel." 

There is no space here and now to go into details of 
the exposition of this part of our text Enough to say in 



xiv.] CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. 247 

brief that we are here exhorted to " stand fast ; n that is, 
as it were, the defensive side of our warfare, maintaining 
our ground and repelling all assaults; that this successful 
resistance is to be " in one spirit," inasmuch as all resis- 
tance depends on our poor feeble spirits being ingrafted 
and rooted in God's Spirit, in vital union with whom we 
may be knit together into a unity which shall oppose a 
granite breakwater to the on-rushing tide of opposition ; 
that in addition to the unmoved resistance which will not 
yield an inch of the sacred soil to the enemy, we are to 
carry the war onwards, and, not content with holding 
our own, are with one mind to strive together for the 
faith of the gospel There is to be discipline, then, and 
compact organisation, like that of the legions whom Paul, 
from his prison among the Praetorian guards, had often 
seen shining in steel, moving like a machine, grim, irre- 
sistible. The cause for which we are to fight is the faith 
of the gospel, an expression which almost seems to justify 
the opinion that " the faith " here means, as it does in 
later usage, the sum and substance of that which is 
believed. But even here the word may have its usual 
meaning of the subjective act of trust in the gospel, and 
the thought may be that we are unitedly to fight for its 
growing power in our own heart and in the hearts of 
others. In any case the idea is plainly here that Christian 
men are set down in the world, like the frontier guard, to 
push the conquests of the empire, and to win more ground 
for their King. 

Such work is ever needed, never more needed than 
n>w. In this day when a wave of unbelief seems pnsing 



248 CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. [serm. 

over society, when material comfort and worldly prospeilty 
are so dazzlingly attractive to so many, the solemn duty 
is laid upon us with even more than usual emphasis, and 
we are called upon to feel more than ever the oneness 
of all true Christians, and to close up our ranks for the 
fight All this can only be done after we have obeyed 
the other injunctions of this text The degree in which 
we feel that we belong to another order of things than 
this around us, and the degree in which we live by the 
Imperial laws, will determine the degree in which we can 
fight with vigour for the growth of the dominion of the 
city. Be it ours to cherish the vivid consciousness that 
we are here dwelling not in the cities of the Canaanites, 
but, like the father of the faithful, in tents pitched at their 
gates, nomads in the midst of a civic life to which we do 
not belong, in order that we may breathe a hallowing 
influence through it, and win hearts to the love of Him 
whom to imitate is perfection, whom to serve is freedom. 

IV. The last exhortation to the colonists is, Be sure of 
victory. 

" In nothing terrified by your adversaries," says PauL 
He uses a very vivid ; and some people might think, a 
very vulgar metaphor here. The word rendered terrified 
properly refers to a horse shying or plunging at some 
object It is generally things half seen and mistaken for 
something more dreadful than themselves that make 
horses shy ; and it is usually a half-look at adversaries, 
and a mistaken estimate of their strength, that make 
Christians afraid. Go up to your fears and speak to 



xiv.] CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. 249 

them, and as ghosts are said to do, they will generally 
fade away. So we may go into the battle, as the rash 
French minister said he did into the Franco-German war, 
"with a light heart," and that for good reasons. We 
have no reason to fear for ourselves. We have no 
reason to fear for the ark of God. We have no reason 
to fear for the growth of Christianity in the world. Many 
good men in this time seem to be getting half-ashamed 
of the gospel, and some preachers are preaching it in 
words which sound like an apology rather than a creed. 
Do not let us allow the enemy to overpower our imagi- 
nations in that fashion. Do not let us fight as if we 
expected to be beaten, always casting our eyes over our 
shoulders, even while we are advancing, to make sure of 
our retreat, but let us trust our gospel, and trust our 
King, and let us take to heart the old admonition, " Lift 
up thy voice with strength ; lift it up, be not afraid" 

Such courage is a prophecy of victory. Such courage 
is based upon a sure hope. "Our citizenship is in 
heaven, from whence also we look for the Lord Jesus as 
Saviour/' The little outlying colony in this far-off edge 
of the empire is ringed about by wide-stretching hosts 
of dusky barbarians. Far as the eye can reach their 
myriads cover the land and the watchers from the 
ramparts might well be dismayed if they had only their 
own resources to depend on. But they know that the 
Emperor in his progress will come to this sorely beset 
outpost, and their eyes are fixed on the pass in the hills 
where they expect to see the waving banners and the 
gleaming, spear* Soon, like our countrymen in Luckno w, 



250 CITIZENS OF HE A VEN. [serm. xiv. 

they will hear the music and the shouts that tell that He 
is at hand Then when He comes, He will raise the 
siege and scatter all the enemies as the chaff of the 
threshing-floor, and the colonists who held the post will 
go with Him to the land which they have never seen, 
but which is their home, and will, with the Victor, sweep 
in triumph " through the gates into the city, 9 



SERMON XV. 

MOSES AND HOBA& 

Numbers x. 29, 31. 

ind Moses said unto Hobab . . • Leave us not, I pray thee ; for* 
asmuch as thou knowest how we are to encamp in the wilderness, 
and thou mayest be to ns instead of eyes. 

T^HE fugitives whom Moses led reached Sinai in three 
A months after leaving Egypt They remained there 
for at least nine months, and amidst the solitude of these 
wild rocks they kept the first Passover — the anniversary 
of their deliverance. " On the twentieth day of the 
second month * they began again their march through the 
grim, unknown desert 

One can fancy their thoughts and fears as they looked 
forward to the enemies and trials which might be await- 
ing them. In these circumstances this story comes in 
most naturally. Some time before the encampment 
broke up from Sinai, a relative of Moses by marriage, 
whose precise connection with him need not trouble ut 
now, Hobab by name, had come into camp on a visit 
He was a Midianite by race, one of the wandering tribes 
from the south-east of the Arabian peninsula. He knew 
every foot of the ground, as such men da He knew 



*S» MOSES AND HOBAB. [sum. 

where the springs were and the herbage, the camping 
places, the short cuts, and the safest routes. So Moses, 
who had no doubt forgotten much of the little desert 
skill he had learned in keeping Jethro's flock, prays 
Hobab to remain with them and give them the benefit 
of his practical knowledge — " to be to us instead of 
eyes." 

The free, wild wanderer does not care to leave the 
black tents of his tribe to link his fortunes with those of 
the unwieldy hosts of fugitives, and flatly refuses. Then 
Moses presses the proposal on him, with judicious 
compliments and large promises of sharing in all their 
prosperity. 

It is noteworthy that the narrative does not tell whether 
the persistent request succeeded or not. We find, indeed, 
his descendants enrolled in the great Doomsday Book of 
the Conquest as possessing land and probably incorporated 
among the Israelites. It may, therefore, be supposed 
that either then or afterwards Hobab forsook his country 
and his father's house to shelter himself beneath the 
wings of the God of Jacob. 

But, at all events, the silence of the record is significant, 
especially if taken in connection with the verses imme- 
diately following. The historian does not think it worth 
while to tell whether Moses' attempt to secure the help 
of a pair of sharp Bedouin eyes succeeded or failed, but 
passes on to describe at once how " the ark of the 
covenant of the Lord went before them to search out a 
resting-place for them," and how " the cloud was upon 
them when they went out of the camp." He puts the 



xv.] MOSES AND HOBAB. 353 

two things side by side, not calling on us to notice the 
juxtaposition, but surely expecting that we shall not miss 
what is so plain. He would teach us that it mattered 
little whether Israel had Hobab or not, if they had the 
ark and the cloud. Perhaps he meant us to ask ourselves 
whether it was not a wavering of faith in Moses to be so 
anxious to secure a human guide when he had a Divine 
leader. So, at least, it appears to us, and from that point 
of view we purpose to view the incident now. 

L There are times and moods in which our forward 
look brings with it a painful sense of the unknown 
wilderness before us. 

The general complexion of the future may be roughly 
estimated. We soon outlive the illusions which dance 
before us at the beginning, and cease to expect such 
surprising delights and radiant flashes of unexpected 
good fortune as young dreams spread before us. We 
know very early in life, unless we are wonderfully 
frivolous and credulous, that the thread of our days is a 
mingled strand, and the prevailing tone a sober, neutral 
tint The main characteristics of what we shall meet we 
know well enough, " That which is to be hath already 
been." But the particular events are hid, and it is 
strange and impressive when we come to think how 
Providence, working with the same uniform materials in 
all human lives, can yet, like some skilful artist, produce 
endless novelty and surprises in each life. All men 
tread substantially the same road. " There hath nothing 



a$4 MOSES AND HOBAB. [sbrm. 

befallen us but such as is common to men, 91 and yet for 
every one of us the road is new day by day. Some of us 
go on for years in an unbroken monotony of the same 
duties and circumstances, and know that in all pro- 
bability we shall be doing the same things till we die, 
and yet every morning we come to our work with some 
feeling of novelty which is not all illusion. " We have 
not passed this way heretofore," is always true of each 
new day's tasks and incident? ; for even if they be the 
same as those of a thousand days before, yet we who 
tread the road are not quite the same, and the bearing 
of the events on us is somewhat different 

The solemn ignorance of the next moment is some- 
times stimulating and joyous. To young life it gives 
zest and buoyancy, and secures many a joyful surprise. 
But to all there come times — and perhaps they are more 
frequent as life goes on, and the consciousness increases 
that changes now will generally be losses — when the 
blank curtain between us and the next beat of the 
pendulum is felt to be very near us and very thick, and 
when the ignorance is saddening, and when the shapes 
that we paint on its black folds are gloomy and threaten- 
ing. Terrors come to us all, and we are apt to clasp 
our treasures with a spasmodic grasp, as much anguish 
as love, when we think of what must be some day, and 
may be any day. In some moods, and thinking of some 
things which are certainties as to the fact, and contin- 
gencies only as to the time, each of us must say — 

"Forward though I cannot ft** 
I guess and fear." 



XV.] MOSES AND HOBAB. *$$ 

It is a libel on God's goodness to speak of the world 
as a wilderness. He has not made it so ; and if anybody 
finds that " all is vanity and vexation of spirit," it is his 
own fault But still one aspect of life is truly represented 
by that figure. There are dangers and barren places, 
and a great solitude in spite of love and companionship, 
and many marchings and lurking foes, and grim rocks, 
and fierce suns, and parched wells, and shadeless sand 
wastes enough in every life to make us quail often and 
look grave always when we think of what may be before us. 
Who knows what we shall see when we top the next hill, 
or round the shoulder of the cliff that bars our way? 
What shout of an enemy may crash in upon the sleeping 
camp; or what stifling gorge of barren granite — blazing 
in the sun and trackless to our feet — shall we have to 
march through to-day ? 

The great crises and trials of our lives mostly come 
unlooked for. There is nothing so certain as the un- 
expected. The worst thunder comes on us out of a clear 
sky. Our Waterloos have a way of crashing into the 
midst of our feasts, and generally it is when all goes 
"merry as a marriage bell " that the cannon shot breaks 
in upon the mirth, which tells that the enemy have 
crossed the river and the battle is begun. 

II. We have here an illustration of the weakness that 
+Jings to human guides. 

Most commentators excuse, or even approve of this 
effort by Moses to secure Hobab's help, and draw from 



256 MOSES AND HOBAB. [serm. 

the story the lesson that supernatural guidance does not 
make human guidance unnecessary. That, of course, 
is true in a fashion ; but it appears to us that the true 
lesson of the incident, considered, as we have already 
remarked, in connection with the following section, is 
much rather that for men who have God to guide them, 
it argues weakness of faith and courage to be much 
solicitous of any Hobab to show them where to go and 
where to camp. 

Of course we are meant to depend on one another. 
No man can safely isolate himself, either intellectually or 
in practical matters. The self-trained scholar is usually 
incomplete. Crotchets take possession of the solitary 
thinker, and peculiarities of character that would have 
been kept in check, and might have become aids in the 
symmetrical development of the whole man, if they had 
been reduced and modified in society, get swollen into 
deformities in solitude. The highest and the lowest 
blessings for life both of heart and mind — blessedness 
and love, and wisdom and goodness — are ministered to 
men through men, and to live without dependence on 
human help and guidance is to be either a savage or an 
angel God's guidance does not make man's needless, 
for a very large part of God's guidance is ministered to 
us through men. And wherever a man's thoughts and 
words teach us to understand God's thoughts and words 
more clearly, to love them more earnestly, or to obey 
them more gladly, there human guidance is discharging 
its noblest function. And wherever the human guide 
turns us away from himself to God, and say s, "Iamb- 



XV.] MOSES AND HOBAB. % 7 

a voice, I am not the light that guides," there it is blessed 
and safe to cherish and to prize it 

But we are ever apt to feel that we cannot do without 
the human leader. Our hearts crave for earthly love, 
and that craving is, as it were, an open channel, through 
which the purest water of life which this world can yield 
is poured into our hearts. But how close to the joy and 
the blessedness does the temptation lie 1 Are we not 
ever in danger of giving the very choicest of our love to 
the dear ones of earth, lavishing on them the precious 
juice which flows from the freshly-gathered grapes, and 
putting God off with the last impoverished and scanty 
drops which can be squeezed from the husks ? How we 
rejoice over the love of earth, and cherish it, and feel 
ourselves rich and strong by reason of it t How we sink 
in utter despair and hopeless sorrow when it passes from 
us, and feel " they have taken away my gods, and what 
have I more?" How we follow the counsel of those 
whom we love, cherishing their lightest word, and feeling 
glad and free when we are carrying out their faintest wishes t 
And, alas, how often, in a very real and tragical sense, 
" a man's foes are they of his own household," and their 
love and tenderness more deadly than their hate could 
ever be, because it keeps us back from God, and blinds 
our eyes to the pointing finger of our true Guide and 
Lover I 

We are meant to get much of our belief and practice 
from human teachers and examples. But our weakness 
of faith in the unseen is ever tending to pervert the 
relation between teacher and taught into practical for* 

• 



258 MOSES AND HOBAB. [serm. 

getfulness that the promise of the new covenant is, " They 
shall all be taught of God." So we are all apt to pin our 
faith on some trusted guide, and many of us in these 
days will follow some teacher of negations with an 
implicit submission which we refuse to give to Jesus 
Christ. We put the teacher between ourselves and God, 
and give to the glowing colours of the painted window 
the admiration that is due to the light which shines 
through it The teacher, be he preacher or author, has 
succeeded in his work when he has taught his pupils to 
do without him, having led them to the place where they 
can draw at first hand from the depths of God ; and the 
highest eulogium that he can receive is when his scholars 
say to him, u Now we believe, not because of thy saying, 
for we have heard him ourselves." 

There are a thousand ways in which our poor weak 
hearts cry out in their sense-bound unbelief for visible 
stays to lean upon, and guides to direct us. In so 
far as that is a legitimate longing, God, who never 
44 sends mouths, but He sends meat to feed them," will 
not leave us to cry unheard. But let us guard against 
that ever-present weakness which clings tremblingly to 
creatures and men for help and guidance, and, in pro- 
portion as it is rich when it possesses them, trembles at 
the prospect of losing them, and is crushed and desolate 
when they go. Do not put them as barriers between 
you and God, nor yield your own clearness of vision to 
them, nor say to any, " Be to us instead of eyes," nor be 
over anxious to secure any Hobab to show you where to 
camp or how to march 



XV.] MOSES AND HOBAB. 359 

IIL The contrast which is brought into prominence 
by the juxtaposition of this section and that which 
follows it, makes emphatic the thought of the true leader 
of our march. 

The true leader of the children of Israel in their 
wilderness journey was not Moses, but the Divine 
Presence in the cloud with a heart of fire, that hovered 
over their camp for a defence and sailed before them for 
a guide. " The Lord went before them by day in a pillar 
of cloud to lead them the way/ When it lay on the 
tent, whether it were for " two days, or a month, or a 
year/' the march was stayed, and the moment that the 
cloud lifted " by day or by night," the encampment was 
broken up and the long procession was got into marching 
order without an instant's pause, to follow its gliding 
motion wherever it led and however long it lasted, 
first to follow was the ark on the shoulders of the 
Levites, and behind it, separated by some space, came 
the " standard of the camp of the children of Judah, and 
then the other tribes in their order." Surely there was 
no place here for Hobab's skill, and if Moses had re- 
membered how their marching and their encampments 
were fixed, he need not have been so anxious to secure 
his sharp eyes. 

We have the same Divine guidance, if we will; in 
sober reality we have God's presence; and waiting 
hearts which have ceased from self-will may receive 
leading as real as ever the pillar gave to Israel 

God's providence does still shape our paths, and God's 



26o MOSES AND HOBAB. [serm. 

Spirit will direct us within, and God's word will counsel 
us. If we will wait and watch we shall not be left un- 
directed. It is wonderful how much practical wisdom 
about the smallest perplexities of daily life comes to men 
who keep both their feet and their wishes still until 
Providence — or, as the world prefers to call it, " circum- 
stances " — clears a path for them. No doubt in all our 
lives there come times when we seem to have been 
brought into a blind alley, and cannot see where we are 
to get out ; but it is very rare indeed that we. do not see 
one step in advance, the duty which lies next us. And 
be sure of this, that if we are content to see but one step 
at a time, and take it, we shall find our way made plain. 
The river winds, and often we seem on a lake without an 
exit Then is the time to go half-speed, and, doubtless, 
when we get a little farther, the overlapping hills on either 
bank will part, and the gorge will open out We do not 
need to see it a mile off ; enough if we see it when we 
are close upon it It may be as narrow and grim, with 
slippery black cliffs towering on either side of the narrow 
ribbon of the stream, as the canons of American rivers, 
but it will float our boat into broader reaches and onwards 
to the great sea. 

Do not seek to outrun God's guidance, to see what 
you are to do a year hence, or to act before you are sure 
of what is His will ; do not let your wishes get in advance 
of the pillar and the ark, and you will be kept from many 
a mistake, and led into a region of deep peace. Our 
blunders mostly come from letting our wishes interpret 
our duties, or hide from us plain indications of unwelcome 



XY.l MOSES AND HOBAB. 261 

tasks. We are all apt to do like Nelson, and put the 
telescope to the blind eye when a signal is flying that we 
dislike. No doubt sometimes even docile hearts make 
mistakes, but no man who has not tried it would conceive 
how many of the highest results of practical wisdom are 
secured by the simple in heart, whose only skill is to wait 
on the Lord and be guided by Him. 

The old injunction is still our duty and our wisdom : 
" Go after the ark, yet there shall be a space between it 
and you ; come not near it, that ye may know the way ye 
ought to go/ 9 If we impatiently press too close on the 
heels of our guide we lose the guidance. There must be 
a reverent following, which allows indications of the way 
fuU time to develop themselves, and does not fling itself 
into new circumstances on the first blush of apparent duty. 
The merely worldly virtues of prudence, caution, judgment 
unbiassed by inclination, and the like, have all a Christian 
side, and are all included and glorified in the elements of 
that temper which religion enjoins as certain to be re- 
warded with the Divine guidance : " The meek will he 
guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way." 

In the strength of that confidence let us turn away 
from dependence upon human guides, and lift our eyes 
to Him with the voice which is at once a prayer and a 
vow : " Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel." Better 
to take Moses for our example when he prayed, as the 
ark set forward and the march began, " Arise, Lord, and 
let thine enemies be scattered/' than to follow him in 
eagerly seeking some Hobab or other to show us where 
we should go. Better to commit our resting times to 



262 MOSES AND HOBAB. [siRii 

God with Moses* prayer when the ark halted, " Return, 
O Lord, unto the many thousands of Israel," and so to 
repose under the shadow of the Almighty, than to seek 
safety in haying some man with us " who knows how we 
are to encamp in this wilderness." God's presence is 
enough for toil and enough for rest. If He journey with 
us by the way, He will abide with us when nightfall 
comes; and His companionship will be sufficient for 
direction on the road, and for solace and safety in the 
evening camp. 

We have often to travel by solitary ways. Some of us 
have to journey all alone, with no fellow-travellers for 
society or for succour. Some of us have perplexed paths 
to tread. Some of us have sad memories of times when 
we journeyed in company with those who will never share 
our tent or counsel our steps any more, and, as we sit 
lonely by our watchfire in the wilderness, have aching 
hearts and silent nights. Some of us may be, as yet, 
rich in companions and helpers, whose words are wisdom, 
whose wishes are love to us, and may tremble as we 
think that one day either they or we shall have to tramp 
on by ourselves. But for us all, cast down and lonely, 
or still blessed with dear ones and afraid to live without 
them, there is a presence which departs never, which 
will move before us as we journey, and hover over us as 
a shield when we rest ; which will be a cloud to veil the 
sun that it smite us not by day, and will redden into fire 
as the night falls, being ever brightest when we need it 
most, and burning clearest of all in the valley at the end, 
where its guidance will only cease because then "the 



xv.] MOSES AND HOBAB. a6f 

Lamb that is in the midst of the throne will lead them.* 
" This God is our God for ever and ever ; he will be our 
guide even unto death." 

IV. A final thought suggested by this incident is, that 
our craving far a human guide has been lovingly met in the 
gift of Christ. 

Moses sought to secure this Midianite guide because 
he was a native of the desert, and had travelled all over 
it His experience was his qualification. We have a 
brother who has Himself travelled every foot of the road 
by which we have to go, and His footsteps have marked 
out with blood a track for us to follow, and have trodden 
a footpath through the else pathless waste. He knows 
" how to encamp in this wilderness," for He Himself has 
11 tabernacled among us," and by experience has learned 
the weariness of the journey and the perils of the 
wilderness. 

His life is our pattern. Our marching orders are brief 
and simple : Follow your leader, and plant your feet in 
His footprints. 

That is the sum of all ethics, and the vade meeum for 
practical life. However diverse our duties and circum- 
stances are, the principles which come out in the Divine 
record of that fair life and wondrous death will fit with 
equal closeness to us all ; and so Divine and all com- 
prehensive is it that it abides as the sufficient pattern for 
every class, for every stage, for every variety of character, 
for every era, and every land, till the end, and beyond 
the end 



264 MOSES AND HOBAB. [serm. xv. 

Our poor weak hearts long for a brother's hand to hold 
us up, for a brother's voice to whisper a word of cheer, 
for a brother's example to animate as well as to instruct 
An abstract law of right is but a cold guide, like the stars 
that shine keen in the polar winter. It is hard even to 
find in the bare thought of an unseen God guiding us 
by His unseen Spirit within and His unseen Providence 
without, the solidity and the warmth which we need. 
Therefore we have mercifully received God manifest in 
the flesh, a Brother to be our guide and the Captain of 
our salvation. 

To Him then transfer all those feelings of confidence 
and affection too often lavished on men. The noblest 
use for the precious ointment of love, which the poorest 
of us bears in the alabaster-box of the heart, is to break 
it on His head. 

Thus loving and following Him, we shall be set free 
from undue dependence on human helpers whilst they 
are with us, from eagerness to secure them, from dread of 
losing them, from despair when they depart Perplexities 
will disappear. Duty will become plain. Life will not 
be a weary march through an unknown land where we 
have to choose our path by our own poor wisdom, and 
death is often the penalty of a blunder. All our duty and 
joy lie in the one command, " Follow me ; " and if we 
only ask Him to be with us " instead of eyes n and accept 
His gentle leading, we shall not walk in darkness, but 
may plunge into thickest night and the most unknown 
land, assured that He will " lead us by a right way to the 
city of habitation." 



SERMON XVI, 

THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. 

St. Matthew i» 5. 
These twelve Jesus sent forth. 

A ND half of " these twelve " are never heard of again as 
**• doing any work for Christ Peter and James and 
John we know ; the other James and Judas have possibly 
left us short letters ; Matthew gives us a Gospel ; and of 
all the rest no trace is left. Some of them are never so 
much as named again, except in the list at the beginning 
of the Acts of the Apostles ; and none of them except the 
three who " seemed to be pillars " appear to have been 
of much importance in the early diffusion of the gospel 

There are many instructive and interesting points in 
reference to the Apostolate. The number of twelve, in 
obvious allusion to the tribes of Israel, proclaims the 
eternal certainty of the Divine promises to His people, 
and the dignity of the New Testament Church as their 
true heir. The ties of relationship which knit so many 
of the Apostles together, the order of the names varying, 
but within certain limits, in the different catalogues, the 
uncultivated provincial rudeness of most of them, would 



266 THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. [seril 

all afford material for important reflections. But, 
perhaps, not the least important fact about the Apostolate 
is that one which we have referred, which like the names 
of countries on the map, escapes notice because it is 
"writ" so "large" — namely, the small place which the 
Apostles as a body fill in the subsequent narrative, and 
the entire oblivion into which so many of them pass from 
the moment of their appointment 

It is to that fact that we wish to turn attention now. It 
may suggest some considerations worth pondering, and 
among other things, may help to show the exaggeration 
of the functions of the office by the opposite extremes of 
priests and rationalists. The one school makes it the 
depositary of exclusive supernatural powers; the other 
regards it as a master-stoke of organization, to which the 
early rapid growth of Christianity was largely due. The 
facts seem to show that it was neither. 

I. The first thought which this peculiar and unexpected 
silence suggests is of the True Worker in the ChureKs 
progress. 

The way in which the New Testament drops these 
Apostles is of a piece with the whole tone of the Bible. 
Throughout, men are introduced into its narratives and 
allowed to slip out with well-marked indifference. No- 
where do we get more vivid, penetrating portraiture, but 
nowhere do we see such carelessness about following the 
fortunes or completing the biographies even of those who 
have filled the largest space in its pages. 

Recall, for example, the way in which the New 



xvi.] THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. 267 

Testament deals with " the very chiefest w Apostles, the 
illustrious triad of Peter, James, and John. The first 
escapes from prison ; we see him hammering at Mary's 
door in the grey of the morning, and after brief, eager 
talk with his friends he vanishes to hide in " another 
place," and is no more heard of, except for a moment in 
the great council, held in Jerusalem, about the admission 
of Gentiles to the Church. The second of the three is 
killed off in a parenthesis. The third is only seen twice 
in the Book of the Acts, as a silent companion of Peter 
at a miracle and before the Sanhedrim. Remember how 
Paul is left in his own hired house, within sight of trial 
and sentence, and neither the original writer of the book 
nor any later hand thought it worth while to add three 
lines to tell the world what became of him. A strange 
way to write history, and a most imperfect narrative, 
surely. Yes, unless there be some peculiarity in the 
purpose of the book, which explains this cold-blooded, 
inartistic, and tantalising habit of letting men leap upon 
the stage as if they had dropped from the clouds, and 
vanish from it as abruptly as if they had fallen through a 
trap-door. 

Such a peculiarity there is. One of the three to whom 
we have referred has explained it in the words with which 
he closes his Gospel, words which might stand for the 
motto of the whole book, " These are written that ye 
might believe that Jesus is the Son of God." The true 
purpose is not to speak of men except in so far as they 
M bore witness to that light " and were illuminated for a 
moment by contact with Him. From the beginning the 



268 THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. [SER1L 

true "Hero" of the Bible is God; its theme is His self- 
revelation culminating for evermore in the Man Jesus 
All other men interest the writers only as they are 
subsidiary or antagonistic to that revelation* As long as 
that breath blows through them they are music; else 
they are but common reeds. Men are nothing except 
as instruments and organs of God He is all, and His 
whole fulness is in Jesus Christ Christ is the sole 
worker in the progress of His Church. That is the 
teaching of all the New Testament The thought is 
expressed in the deepest, simplest form in His own 
unapproachable words, unfathomable as they are in their 
depth of meaning, and inexhaustible in their power to 
strengthen and to cheer : u I am the vine, ye are the 
branches, without me ye can do nothing/' It shapes 
the whole treatment of the history in the so-called " Acts 
of the Apostles," which by its very first sentence pro- 
claims itself to be the Acts of the ascended Jesus, " the 
former treatise" being declared to have had for its 
subject " all that Jesus began to do and teach " while on 
earth, and this treatise being manifestly the continuance 
of the same theme, and the record of the heavenly 
activity of the Lord. So the thought runs through all 
the book : " The help that is done on earth, He does it 
all himselfl" 

So let us think of Him and of His relation to us as 
well as to that early Church. His continuous energy is 
pouring down on us if we will accept it In us, for us, 
^ us He works. "My father worketh hitherto," said 
Ht when here, "and I work;" and now, exalted on 



xvi.] THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. 269 

high, He has passed into that same Divine Repose, 
which is at the same time the most energetic Divine 
Activity, He is all in all to His people. He is all their 
strength, wisdom, and righteousness. They are but the 
clouds irradiated by the sun and bathed in its brightness ; 
He is the light which flames in their grey mist and turns 
it to a glory. They are but the belts and cranks and 
wheels; He is the power. They are but the channel, 
muddy and dry ; He is the flashing life that fills it and 
makes it a joy. They are the body ; He is the soul 
dwelling in every part to save it from corruption and 
give movement and warmth. 

"Thou art the organ, whose full breath is thunder | 
I am the keys, beneath thy fingers pressed." 

If this be true, how it should deliver us from all over- 
estimate of men, to which our human afflictions and out 
feeble faith tempt us so sorely 1 There is one man, and 
One man only, whose biography is a " Gospel," who owes 
nothing to circumstances, and who originates the power 
which He wields — One who is a new beginning, and has 
changed the whole current of human history, One to 
whom we are right to bring offerings of the gold, and 
incense, and myrrh of our hearts, and wills, and minds, 
which it is blasphemy and degradation to lay at the feet 
of any others. We may utterly love, trust, and obey 
Jesus Christ We dare not do so to any other. The 
inscription written over the whole book, that it may be 
transcribed on our whole nature, is, " No man any more 
save Jesus only. 19 



*JQ THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. [serm. 

If this thought be true, what confidence it ought to 
give us as we think of the tasks and fortunes of the 
Church ! If we think only of the difficulties and of the 
enormous task before us, so disproportioned to our weak 
powers, we shall be disposed to agree with our enemies, 
who talk as if Christianity was on the point of perishing, 
as they have been doing ever since it began. But the 
outlook is wonderfully different when we take Christ into 
the account We are very apt to leave Him out of the 
reckoning. But one man with Christ to back him is 
always in the majority. He flings his sword clashing 
into one scale, and it weighs down all that is in the other. 
The walls are very lofty and strong, and the besiegers 
few and weak, badly armed, and quite unfit for the 
assault; but if we lift our eyes high enough, we, too, 
shall see a man with a drawn sword over against us, and 
our hearts may leap up in assured confidence of victory 
as we recognise in Him the Captain of the Lord's Host, 
who has already overcome, and will make us valiant in 
fight and more than conquerors. 

When conscious of our own weakness, and tempted to 
think of our task as heavy, or when complacent in our 
own power, and tempted to regard our task as easy, let 
us think of His ever-present work in and for His people 
till it braces us for all duty, and rebukes our easy-going 
idleness. Surely from that thought of the active 
ascended Christ may come to many of His slothful 
followers the pleading question, as from His own lips, 
"Dost thou not care that thou hast left me to serve 
alone ? H Surely to us all it should bring inspiration and 



xvi.] THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. rj\ 

strength, courage and confidence, deliverance from man, 
and elevation above the reverence of blind impersonal 
forces. Surely we may all lay to heart the grand lesson 
that union with Him is our only strength, and oblivion 
of ourselves our highest wisdom. Surely he has best 
learned his true place and the worth of Jesus Christ who 
abides with unmoved humility at His feet, and, like the 
lonely lowly forerunner, puts away all temptations to 
self-assertion while joyfully accepting it as the law of his 
life to 

" Fade In the light of the planet be lores, 
To fade in his lore and to die." 

Blessed is he who is glad to say, " He must increase, 
I must decrease I n 

II. This same silence of Scripture as to so many of 
the Apostles may be taken as suggesting what the real 
work of these delegated workers was. 

It certainly seems very strange that if they were the 
possessors of such extraordinary powers as the Sacra- 
mentarian theory implies, we should hear so little of 
them in the narrative. The silence of Scripture about 
them goes a long way to discredit such ideas, while it is 
entirely accordant with a more modest view of the 
Apostolic office. 

What was an Apostle's function during the life of 
Christ? One of the evangeKsts divides it into three 
portions — " to be with Jesus, to preach the kingdom, to 
cast out devils and to heaL" There is nothing in these 
offices peculiar to them. The seventy had miraculous 



272 THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. [serm. 

powers too, and some at least were our Lord's com- 
panions and preachers of His kingdom who were simple 
disciples. What was an Apostle's function after the 
resurrection ? Peter's words, on proposing the election 
of a new apostle, lay down the duty as simply " to bear 
witness " of that resurrection. Not supernatural channels 
of mysterious grace, not lords over God's heritage, not 
even leaders of the Church, but bearers of a testimony 
to the great historical fact, on the acceptance of which 
all belief in an historical Christ depended then and 
depends now. Each of the greater of the apostles is 
penetrated with the same thought. Paul disclaims 
anything beside in his " Not I, but the grace of God in 
me." Peter thrusts the question at the staring crowd, 
" Why look ye on us as though by our power or holiness 
we had made this man to walk ? " John, in his calm 
way, tells his children at Ephesus, " Ye need not that 
any man teach you." 

Such an idea of the Apostolic office is far more 
reasonable and accordant with Scripture than a figment 
about unexampled powers and authority in the Church, 
ft accounts for the qualifications as stated in the same 
address, which merely secure the validity of their testi- 
mony. The one thing that must be found in an Apostle 
was that he should have been in familiar intercourse 
with Christ during his earthly life, both before and after 
His resurrection, in order that he might be able to say, 
I knew Him well ; I know that he died ; I know that 
He rose again ; I saw Him go up to heaven. For such 
i work there was no need for men of commanding 



xvi.] THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. rj^ 

power. Plain, simple, honest men who had the requisite 
eye-witness were sufficient The guidance and the 
missionary work of the Church need not necessarily be 
in their hands, and, in fact, does not seem to have been. 
In harmony with this view of the office and its requisites, 
we find that Paul rests the validity of his Apostolate on 
the fact that " He was seen of me also," and regards 
that vision as his true appointment which left him not 
" one whit behind the very chiefest apostles." Miracu- 
lous gifts indeed they had, and miraculous gifts they 
imparted; but in both instances others shared their 
powers with them. It was no apostle who laid his hands 
on the blinded Saul in that house in Damascus and said, 
" Receive the Holy Ghost." An apostle stood by passive 
and wondering when the Holy Ghost fell on Cornelius 
and his comrades. In reality Apostolic succession is 
absurd, because there is nothing to succeed to, except 
what cannot be transmitted, personal knowledge of the 
reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ To establish 
that fact as indubitable history is to lay the foundation of 
the Christian Church, and the twelve plain men who did 
that needed no superstitious mist around them to 
magnify their greatness. 

In so far as any succession to them or any devolution 
of their office is possible, all Christian men inherit it, for 
to bear witness of the living power of the risen Lord is 
still the office and honour of every believing souL It is 
still true that the sharpest weapon which any man can 
wield for Christ is the simple adducing of his own 
personal experience. "That which we have seen and 



274 THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. [skrm. 

handled we declare " is still the best form into which : 
preaching can be cast And such a voice every man and 
woman who has found the sweetness and the power of 
Christ filling their own souls, is bound — rather let us say 
is privileged — to lift up: "This honour have all the 
saints." Christ is the true worker, and all our work is 
but to proclaim Him, and what He has done and is 
doing for ourselves and for all men. 

IIL We may gather too the lesson of how often faith- 
ful work is unrecorded and forgotten* 

No doubt those Apostles who have no place in the 
history toiled honestly and did their Lord's commands 
and oblivion has swallowed it alL Bartholomew and 
" Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus," and the rest 
of them, have no place in the record, and their obscure 
work is faded, faithful and good as certainly it was. 

So it will be sooner or later with us alL For most of 
us, our service has to be unnoticed and unknown, and 
the memory of our poor work will live perhaps for a year 
or two in the hearts of some few who loved us, but will 
fade wholly when they follow us into the silent land. 
Well, be it so; we shall sleep none the less sweetly, 
though none be talking about us over our heads. The 
world has a short memory, and, as the years go on, the 
list that it has to remember grows so crowded that it is 
harder and harder to find room to write a new name on 
it, or to read the old The letters on the tombstones are 
soon erased by the feet that tramp across the church- 
yard. All that matters very little. The notoriety of our 



xvi.] THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. *r$ 

work is of no consequence. The earnestness and ac- 
curacy with which we strike our blow is all important ; 
but it matters nothing how far it echoes. It is not the 
heaven of heavens to be talked about, nor does a man's 
life consist in the abundance of newspaper or other para- 
graphs about him. " The love of fame " is, no doubt, 
sometimes found in " minds " otherwise " noble," but in 
itself is very much the reverse of noble. We shall do 
our work best, and be saved from much festering anxiety 
which corrupts our purest service and fevers our serenest 
thoughts, if we once fairly make up our minds to working 
unnoticed and unknown, and determine that whether our 
post be a conspicuous or an obscure one we shall fill it 
to the utmost of our power ; careless of praise or censure 
because our judgment is with our God ; careless whether 
we are unknown or well known, because we are known 
altogether to Him. 

The magnitude of our work in men's eyes is as little 
important as the noise of it Christ gave all the Apostles 
their tasks — to some of them to found the Gentile 
churches, to some of them to leave to all generations 
precious teaching, to some of them none of these things. 
What then ? Were the Peters and the Johns more highly 
favoured than the others? Was their work greater in 
His sight ? Not so. To Him all service done from the 
same motive is the same, and His measure of excellence 
is the quantity of love and spiritual force in our deeds, 
not the width of the area over which they spread. An 
estuary that goes wandering over miles of shallows may 
have less water in it, and may creep more languidly, than 

f a 



276 THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. [sirm. 

the torrent that thunders through some narrow gorge. 
The deeds that stand highest on the records in heaven 
are not those which we vulgarly call great Many " a 
cup of cold water only " will be found to have been rated 
higher there than jewelled golden chalices brimming 
with rare wines. God's treasures, where He keeps His 
children's gifts, will be like many a mother's secret store 
of relics of her children, full of things of no value, what 
the world calls " trash," but precious in His eyes for the 
love's sake that was in them. 

All service which is done from the same motive in the 
same force is of the same worth in His eyes. It does not 
matter whether you have the gospel in a penny Testament 
printed on thin paper with black ink and done up in 
cloth, or in an illuminated missal glowing in gold and 
colour, painted with loving care on fair parchment, and 
bound in jewelled ivory. And so it matters little about 
the material or the scale on which we express our devotion 
and our aspirations ; all depends on what we copy, not 
on the size of the canvas on which, or on the material 
in which, we copy it " Small service is true service 
while it lasts," and the unnoticed insignificant servants 
may do work every whit as good and noble as the most 
widely known, to whom have been intrusted by Christ 
tasks that mould the ages. 

IV. Finally we may add that forgotten work is re- 
mcmbcred, and unrecorded names are recorded above* 

The names of these almost anonymous apostles have 
no place in the records of the advancement of the Church 



xvi.] THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. 177 

or of the development of Christian doctrine. They drop 
out of the narrative after the list in the first chapter of the 
Acts. But we do hear of them once more. In that last 
vision of the great city which the seer beheld descending 
from God, we read that in its "foundations were the 
names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb." All were 
graven there — the inconspicuous names carved on no 
record of earth, as well as the familiar ones cut deep in 
the rock to be seen of all men for ever. 

At the least that grand image may tell us that when 
the perfect state of the Church is realised, the work 
which these twelve men did when their testimony laid its 
foundation, will be for ever associated with their names. 
Unrecorded on earth, they are written in heaven* 

The forgotten work and workers are remembered by 
Christ His faithful heart and all-seeing eye keep them 
ever in view. The world, and the Church whom these 
humble men helped, may forget, yet will not He forget 
From whatever muster-roll of benefactors and helpers 
their names may be absent, they will be in His list The 
Apostle Paul, in his epistle to the Philippians, has a 
saying in which his delicate courtesy is beautifully con- 
spicuous, where he half apologizes for not sending his 
greetings "to others my fellow-workers" by name, and 
reminds them that however their names may be unwritten 
in his letter, they have been inscribed by a mightier hand 
on a better page, and " are in the Lamb's book of life/ 9 
It matters very little from what record ours may be absent 
so long as they are found there. Let us rejoice that, 
though we may live obscure and die forgotten, we may 



278 THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. [serm. 

have our names written on the breastplate of our High 
Priest as He stands in the Holy Place, the breastplate 
which lies close to His heart of love, and is fixed to His 
arm of power. 

The forgotten and unrecorded work lives too in the 
great whole. The fruit of our labour may perhaps not be 
separable from that of others, any more than the sowers 
can go into the reaped harvest-field and indentify the 
gathered ears which have sprung from the seed that they 
sowed, but it is there all the same ; and whosoever may 
be unable to pick out each man's share in the blessed 
total outcome, the Lord of the Harvest knows, and his 
accurate proportionment of individual reward to individual 
service will not mar the companionship in the general 
gladness, when " he that soweth and he that reapeth shall 
rejoice together." 

The forgotten work will live, too, in the blessed results 
to the doers. Whatever of recognition and honour we 
may miss here, we cannot be robbed of the blessing to 
ourselves, in the perpetual influence on our own character, 
of every piece of faithful even if imperfect service. 
Habits are formed, emotions deepened, principles con- 
firmed, capacities enlarged by every deed done for Christ, 
which make an over-measure of reward here, and in their 
perfect form hereafter arc heaven. Nothing done for 
Him is ever wasted. " Thou shalt find it after many days." 
We are all writing our lives, histories here, as if with one 
of these * manifold writers M — a black blank page beneath 
the flimsy sheet on which we write, but presently the 
black page will be taken away, and the writing will stand 



xvi.] THE OBSCURE APOSTLES. 279 

out plain on the page behind that we did not see. Life 
is the filmy unsubstantial page on which our pen rests ; 
the black page is death ; and the page beneath is that 
indelible transcript of our earthly actions, which we shall 
find waiting for us to read, with shame and confusion of 
face, or with humble joy, in another world. 

Then let us do our work for Christ, not much careful 
whether it be greater or smaller, obscure or conspicuous, 
assured that whoever forgets us and it He will remember, 
and however our names may be unrecorded on earth they 
will be written in heaven, and confessed by Hint before 
His Father and the holy angels, 



SERMON XVII. 

THE SOUL'S PERFECTION. 

Philip. HI 15. 

Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded : and if is 
anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall rereal even this 
onto you. 

u A S many as be perfect ; n and how many may they 
*** be ? Surely a very short bede-roll would contain 
their names ; or would there be any other but the Name 
which is above every name upon it ? Part of the answer 
to such a question may be found in observing that 
the New Testament very frequently uses the word to 
express not so much the idea of moral completeness as 
that of physical maturity. For instance, when Paul says 
that he would have his converts to be " men in under- 
standing/ 9 and when the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks 
of " them that are of full age," the same word is used 
as this " perfect " in our text. Clearly in such cases it 
means "full grown," as in contrast with "babes," and 
expresses not absolute completeness, but what we may 
term a relative perfection, a certain maturity of character 
and advanced stage of Christian attainment, far removed 
from the infantile epoch of the Christian life. 



Serm. xvil] THE SOUVS PERFECTION. 281 

Another contribution to the answer may be found 
in observing that in this very context these " perfect " 
people are exhorted to cultivate the sense of not having 
" already attained," and to be constantly reaching forth 
to unattained heights, so that a sense of imperfection and 
a continual effort after higher life are parts of Paul's 
" perfect man." And it is to be still further noticed that 
on the same testimony "perfect " people may probably 
be "otherwise minded;" by which we understand not 
divergently minded from one another, but " otherwise w 
than the true norm or law of life would prescribe, and so 
may stand in need of the hope that God will by degrees 
bring them into conformity with His will, and show them 
"this," namely, their divergence from his Pattern for 
them. 

It is worth our while to look at these large thoughts 
thus involved in the words before us. 

I. Then there are people whom without exaggeration 
the judgment of truth calls perfect. 

The language of the New Testament has no scruple in 
calling men "saints" who had many sins, and none in 
calling men perfect who had many imperfections ; and it 
does so, not because it has any fantastic theory about 
religious emotions being the measure of moral purity, 
but partly for the reasons already referred to, and partly 
because it wisely considers the main thing about a 
character to be not the degree to which it has attained 
completeness in its ideal, but what that ideal is. The 
distance a man has got on his journey is of less con* 



28a THE SOUVS PERFECTION. [serm. 

sequence than the direction in which his face is turned 
The arrow may fall short, but to what mark was it shot ? 
In all regions of life a wise classification of men arranges 
them according to their aims rather than their achieve- 
ments. The visionary who attempts something high 
and accomplishes scarcely anything of it, is often a far 
nobler man, and his poor, broken, foiled, resultless life 
far more perfect than his who aims at marks on the low 
levels and hits them full Such lives as these, full of 
yearning and aspiration, though it be for the most part 

vain, are 

" like the young moon with a ragged edge 
E'en in its imperfection beautiful." 

If then it be wise to rank men and their pursuits 
according to their aims rather than their accomplish- 
ments, is there one class of aims so absolutely corres- 
ponding to man's nature and relations that to take them 
for one's own, and to reach some measure of approxi- 
mation to them, may fairly be called the perfection of 
human nature ? Is there one way of living concerning 
which we may say that whosoever adopts it has, in so far 
as he does adopt it, discerned and attained the purpose of 
his being ? The literal force of the word in our text gives 
pertinence to that question, for it distinctly means 
" having reached the end." And if that be taken as the 
meaning, there need be no doubt about the answer. 
Grand old words have taught us long ago " Man's chief 
end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever." Yes, 
he who lives for God has taken that for his aim which all 
bis nature and all his relations prescribe, he is doing 



xvil] THE SOUL'S PERFECTION. 283 

wAat he was made and meant to do ; and however in- 
complete may be its attainments, the lowest form of a 
God-fearing, God-obeying life is higher and more nearly 
"perfect" than the fairest career or character against 
which, as a blight on all its beauty, the damning accu- 
sation may be brought, " The God in whose hand thy 
breath is, and whose are all thy ways, thou hast not 
glorified." 

People »neer at " saints " and point at their failings. 
They remind us of the foul stains in David's career, for 
instance, and mock as they ask, u Is this your man after 
God's own heart?" Yes, he is; not because religion 
has a morality of its own different from that of the world 
(except as being higher), nor because " saints " make up 
for adultery and murder by making or singing psalms, 
but because the main set and current of the life was 
evidently towards God and goodness, and these hideous 
sins were glaring contradictions, eddies and backwaters, 
as it were, wept over with bitter self-abasement and 
conquered by strenuous effort Better a life of Godward 
aspiration and straining after purity, even if broken by 
such a fall, so recovered, than one of habitual earthward 
grubbing, undisturbed by gross sin. 

And another reason warrants the application of the 
word to men whose present is full of incompleteness, 
namely, the fact that such men have in them the germ of 
a life which has no natural end but absolute completeness. 
The small seed may grow very slowly in the climate and 
soil which it finds here, and be only a poor little bit of 
ragged green, very shabby and inconspicuous by the side 



284 THE SOUVS PERFECTION. [SKRit 

of the native flowers of earth flaunting around it, but it 
has a Divine germinant virtue within, and waits but 
being carried to its own clime and " planted in the house 
of the Lord" above, to "flourish in the courts of our 
God," when these others with their glorious beauty have 
faded away and are flung out to rot 

II. We have set forth here very distinctly two of the 
characteristics of this perfection. 

The apostle in our text exhorts the perfect to be "thus 
minded." How is that? Evidently the word points 
back to the previous clauses, in which he has been des- 
cribing his own temper and feeling in the Christian race. 
He sets that before the Philippians as their pattern, or 
rather invites them to fellowship with him in the estimate 
of themselves and in their efforts after higher attainments. 
" Be thus minded 9 ' means, Think as I do of yourselves, 
and do as I do in your daily life. 

How did he think of himself? He tells us in the 
sentence before, " Not as though I were already perfect 
I count not myself to have apprehended." So then a 
leading characteristic of this true Christian perfection is 
a constant consciousness of imperfection. In all fields 
of effort, whether intellectual, moral, or mechanical, as 
faculty grows, consciousness of insufficiency grows with 
it The farther we get up the hill the more we see how 
far it is to the horizon. The more we know the more 
we know our ignorance. The better we can do the more 
we discern how much we cannot do. Only people who 
never have done and never will do anything, or else raw 



xni.] THE SOUL'S PERFECTION. 28$ 

apprentices with the mercifully granted self-confidence of 
youth, which gets beaten out of most of us soon enough, 
think that they can do everything. 

In morals and in Christian life the same thing is true. 
The measure of our perfection will be the consciousness 
of our imperfection — a paradox, but a great truth. It is 
plain enough that it will be so. Conscience becomes 
more sensitive as we get nearer right The worse a 
man is the less it speaks to him, and the less he hears it 
When it ought to thunder it whispers ; when we need it 
most it is least active. The thick skin of a savage will 
not be disturbed by lying on sharp stones, while a 
crumpled rose-leaf robs the Sybarite of his sleep. So 
the habit of evil hardens the cuticle of conscience, and 
the practice of goodness restores tenderness and sensi- 
bility ; and many a man laden with crime knows less of 
its tingling than some fair soul that looks almost spotless 
to all eyes but its own. One little stain of rust will be 
conspicuous on a brightly polished blade, but if it be all 
dirty and dull a dozen more or fewer will make little 
difference. As men grow better they become like that 
glycerine barometer recently introduced, on which a fall 
or a rise that would have been invisible with mercury to 
record it takes up inches, and is glaringly conspicuous. 
Good people sometimes wonder, and sometimes are made 
doubtful and sad about themselves by this abiding and 
even increased consciousness of sin. There is no need 
to be so. The higher the temperature the more chilling 
would it be to pass into an ice-house, and the more our 
lives are brought into fellowship with the perfect life the 



286 THE SOWS PERFECTION. [skrm. 

more shall we feel our own shortcomings. Let us be 
thankful if our consciences speak to us more loudly than 
they used to do. It is a sign of growing holiness, as the 
tingling in a frost-bitten limb is of returning life. Let us 
seek to cultivate and increase the sense of our own 
imperfection, and be sure that the diminution of a con- 
sciousness of sin means not diminished power of sin, but 
lessened horror of it, lessened perception of right, lessened 
love of goodness, and is an omen of death, not a symptom 
of life. Painter, scholar, craftsman all know that the 
condition of advance is the recognition of an ideal not 
attained Whoever has not before him a standard to 
which he has not reached will grow no more. If we see 
no faults in our work we shall never do any better. The 
condition of all Christian, as of all other progress, is to be 
drawn by that fair vision before us, and to be stung into 
renewed effort to reach it, by the consciousness of present 
imperfection. 

Another characteristic to which these perfect men are 
exhorted is a constant striving after a further advance. 
How vigorously, almost vehemently, that temper is put 
in the context — " I follow after; " " I press towards the 
mark ; " and that picturesque " reaching forth," or, as the 
Revised Version gives it, " stretching forward." The full 
force of the latter word cannot be given in any one 
English equivalent, but may be clumsily hinted by some 
such phrase as "stretching one's self out over," as a 
runner might do with body thrown forward and arms 
extended in front, and eagerness in every strained muscle, 
and eye outrunning foot, and hope clutching the goal 



xtil] THE SOWS PERFECTION. 287 

already. So yearning forward, and setting all the current 
of his being, both faculty and desire, to the yet unreached 
mark, the Christian man is to live. His glances are not 
to be bent backwards, but forwards. He is not to be a 
" praiser of the past," but \ j herald and expectant of a 
nobler future. He is the child of the day and of the 
morning, forgetting the things which are behind, and 
ever yearning towards the things which are before, and 
drawing them to himself. To look back is to be stiffened 
into a living death ; only with faces set forward are we 
safe and welL 

This buoyant energy of hope and effort is to be the 
result of the consciousness of imperfection of which we 
have spoken. Strange to many of us, in some moods, 
that a thing so bright should spring up from a thing so 
dark, and that the more we feel our own shortcomings, 
the more hopeful should we be of a future unlike the 
past, and the more earnest in our effort to make that 
future the present. There is a type of Christian expe- 
rience not uncommon among devout people, in which the 
consciousness of imperfection paralyzes effort instead of 
quickening it ; men lament their evil, their slow progress 
and so on, and remain the same year after year. They 
are stirred to no effort There is no straining onwards. 
They almost seem to lose the faith that they can ever be 
any better. How different this from the grand, whole- 
some completeness of Paul's view here, which embraces 
both elements, and even draws the undying brightness of 
this forward-looking confidence from the very darkness of 
bis sense of present imperfection I 



288 THE SOUL'S PERFECTION. [sbrm. 

So should it be with us, "as many as be perfect" 
Before us stretch indefinite possibilities of approximating 
to the unattainable fulness of the Divine life. We may 
grow in knowledge and in holiness through endless ages 
and grades of advance. In a most blessed sense we may 
have that for our highest joy which in another meaning 
is a punishment of unfaithfulness and indocility, that we 
shall be " ever learning, and never coming to the full 
knowledge of the truth." No limit can be put to what 
we may receive of God, nor to the closeness, the fulness 
of our communion with Him, nor to the beauty of holi- 
ness which may pass from Him into our poor characters, 
and irradiate our homely feces. Then, brethren, let us 
cherish a noble discontent with all that we at present are. 
Let our spirits stretch out all their powers to the better 
things beyond, as the plants grown in darkness will send 
out pale shoots that feel blindly towards the light, or the 
seed sown on the top of a rock will grope down the bare 
stone for the earth by which it must be fed. Let the 
sense of our own weakness ever lead to a buoyant con- 
fidence in what we, even we, may become if we will only 
take the grace we have. To this touchstone let us bring 
all claims to higher holiness — they who are perfect are 
most conscious of imperfection, and most eager in their 
efforts after a further progress in the knowledge, love, and 
likeness of God in Christ 

IIL We have here also distinctly brought out the co* 
txis fence with these characteristics of their opposites. 

* If in anything ye are otherwise minded," says Paul 



xvu.] THE SOWS PERFECTION. 289 

I have already suggested that this expression evidently 
refers not to difference of opinion among themselves, but 
to a divergence of character from the pattern of feeling 
and life which he has been proposing to them* If in any 
respects ye are unconscious of your imperfections, if there 
be any " witch's mark w of insensibility in some spot of 
your conscience to some plain transgressions of law, if in 
any of you there be some complacent illusion of your own 
stainlessness, if to any of you the bright vision before you 
seem faint and unsubstantial, God will show you what you 
do not see. Plainly then he considers that there will be 
found among these perfect men states of feeling and 
estimates of themselves opposed to those which he has 
been exhorting them to cherish. Plainly he supposes 
that a good man may pass for a time under the dominion 
of impulses and theories which are of another kind from 
those that rule his life. 

He does not expect the complete and uninterrupted 
dominion of these higher powers. He recognises the 
plain facts that the true self, the central life of the soul, 
the higher nature, " the new man," abides in a self which 
is but gradually renewed, and that there is a long distance 
so to speak, from the centre to the circumference. That 
higher life is planted, but its germination is a work of 
time. The leaven does not leaven the whole mass in a 
moment, but creeps on from particle to particle. " Make 
the tree good " and in due time its fruit will be good. 
But the conditions of our human life are conflict, and 
these peaceful images of growth and unimpeded natural 
development, " first (he blade, then the ear, after that the 



290 THE SOUL'S PERFECTION. [skrm. 

full corn in the ear," are not meant to tell all the truth. 
Interruptions from external circumstances, struggles of 
flesh with spirit, and of imagination and heart and will 
against the better life implanted in the spirit, are the lot 
of all, even the most advanced here, and however a man 
may be perfect, there will always be the possibility that in 
something he may be " otherwise minded." 

Such an admission does not make such interruptions less 
blameworthy when they occur. The doctrine of averages 
does not do away with the voluntary character of each 
single act The same number of letters are yearly posted 
without addresses. Does anybody dream of not scold- 
ing the errand boy who posted them, or the servant who 
did not address, because he knows that ? We are quite 
sure that we could have resisted each time that we fell 
That piece of sharp practice in business, or that burst of 
bad temper in the household which we were last guilty 
of— could we have helped it or not? Conscience must 
answer that question, which does not depend at all on 
the law of averages. Guilt is not taken away by assert- 
ing that sin cleaves to men, " perfect men." 

But the feelings with which we should regard sin and 
contradictions of men's truest selves in ourselves and 
others, should be so far altered by such thoughts, that we 
should be very slow to pronounce that a man cannot be 
a Ghristian because he has done so and so. Are there 
any sins which are clearly incompatible with a Christian 
character? All sins are inconsistent with it, but that is 
a very different matter. The uniform direction of % 
man's life being godless, selfish, devoted to the objects 



xvil] THE SOUL'S PERFECTION. 291 

and pursuits of time and sense, is incompatible with his 
being a Christian — but, thank God, no single act, how 
ever dark, is so, if it be in contradiction to the main 
tendency impressed upon the character and conduct 
It is not for us to say that any single deed shows a man 
cannot be Christ's nor to fling ourselves down in despair 
saying, " If I were a Christian, I could not have done 
that" Let us remember that u all unrighteousness is 
sin/' and the least sin is in flagrant opposition to our 
Christian profession ; but let us also remember, and that 
not to blunt our consciences or weaken our efforts, that 
Paul thought it possible for perfect men to be " other- 
wise minded " from their deepest selves and their highest 
pattern. 

IV. The crowning hope that lies in these words is the 
certainty of a gradual but compute attainment of all the 
Christian's aspirations after God and goodness. 

The ground of that confidence lies in no natural ten- 
dencies in us, in no effort of ours, but solely in that great 
name which is the anchor of all our confidence, the name 
of God. Why is Paul certain that " God will reveal even 
this unto you n ? Because He is God. The apostle has 
learned the infinite depth of meaning that lies in that 
name. He has learned that God is not in the way of 
leaving off His work before He has done His work, and 
that none can say of Him, that " He began to build, and 
was not able to finish." The assurances of an unchange- 
able purpose in redemption, and of inexhaustible re- 
sources to effect it; of a love that can never fade, and 

V t 



*93 THE SOWS PERFECTION. [sbrm. 

of a grace that can never be exhausted — are all treasured 
for us in that mighty name. And such confidence is 
confirmed by the manifest tendency of the principles and 
motives brought to bear on us in Christianity to lead on 
to a condition of absolute perfection, as well as by the 
experience which we may have, if we will, of the sancti- 
fying and renewing power of His Spirit in our Spirit 

By the discipline of daily life, by the ministry of sorrow 
and joy, by merciful chastisements dogging our steps 
when we stray, by duties and cares, by die teaching of 
His word coming even closer to our hearts and quicken- 
ing our consciences to discern evil where we had seen 
none, as well as kindling in us desires after higher and 
rarer goodness, by the reward of enlarged perceptions of 
duty and greater love towards it, with which He recom- 
penses lowly obedience to the duty as yet seen, by the 
secret influences of His Spirit of Power and of Love and 
of a sound Mind breathed into our waiting spirits, by the 
touch of His own sustaining hand and glance of His own 
guiding eye, He will reveal to the lowly soul all that is 
yet wanting in its knowledge, and communicate all that 
is lacking in character. 

So for us, the true temper is confidence in His power 
and will, an earnest waiting on Him, a brave forward 
yearning hope blended with a lowly consciousness of im- 
perfection, which is a spur not a clog, and vigorous 
increasing efforts to bring into life and character the fulness 
and beauty of God Presumption should be as far from 
us as despair— the one because we have not already 
attained, the other because "God will reveal even this 



xvil] THE SOULS PERFECTION. 293 

unto us." Only let us keep in mind the caution which 
the apostle, knowing the possible abuses which might 
gather round His teaching, has here attached to it, " Never 
theless " — though all which I have been saying is true, 
it is only true on this understanding — " whereto we have 
already attained, by the same let us walk." God will perfect 
that which concerneth you if— and only if— you go on as 
you have begun, if you make your creed a life, if you show 
what you are. If so, then all the rest is a question of 
time. A has been said, and Z will come in its proper 
place. Begin with humble trust in Christ, and a process 
is commenced which has no natural end short of that 
great hope with which this chapter closes, that the change 
which begins in the deepest recesses of our being, and 
struggles slowly and with many interruptions, into partial 
visibility in our character, shall one day triumphantly ir- 
radiate our whole nature out to the very finger tips, and 
"even the body of our humiliation shall be fashioned like 
unto the body of Christ's glory, according to the working 
whereby He is able even to subdue all things to Him- 
self 



SERMON XVIII. 

TOE FIRST PREACHING AT ANTIOCH. 

Acts zL 20, 21. 

And' tome of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which, when 
they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching 
the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them : and 
a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord, 

HHHUS simply does the historian tell one of the greatest 
• events in the history of the Church. How great it 
was will appear if we observe that the weight of authority 
among critics and commentators sees here an extension 
of the message of salvation to Greeks, that is, to pure 
heathens, and not a mere preaching to Hellenists, that 
is, to Greek-speaking Jews born outside Palestine. 

If that be correct, this was a great stride forward in 
the development of the Church. It needed a vision to 
overcome the scruples of Peter, and impel him to the 
bold innovation of preaching to Cornelius and his house- 
hold, and, as we know, his doing so gave grave offence 
to some of his brethren in Jerusalem. But in the case 
before us^ some Cypriote and African Jews — men of no 
note in the Church, whose very names have perished, 
with no official among them, with no vision nor command 



serm. KUlh] THE FIRST PREACHING. 295 



to impel them, with no precedent to encourage them, 
with nothing but the truth in their minds and the impulses 
of Christ's love in their hearts — solve the problem of the 
extension of Christ's message to the heathen, and, quite 
unconscious of the greatness of their act, do the thing 
about the propriety of which there had been such serious 
question in Jerusalem. 

This boldness becomes even more remarkable if we 
notice that the incident of our text may have taken place 
before Peter's visit to Cornelius. The verse before our 
text, " They which were scattered abroad upon the perse- 
cution that arose about Stephen travelled, . • . preaching the 
word to none but unto the Jews only," is almost a verbatim 
repetition of words in an earlier chapter, and evidently 
suggests that the writer is returning to that point of time, 
in order to take up another thread of his narrative con- 
temporaneous with those already pursued. If so, three 
distinct lines of expansion appear to have started from 
the dispersion of the Jerusalem church in the persecution 
— namely Philip's mission to Samaria, Peter's to Cornelius, 
and this work in Antioch. Whether prior in time or no, the 
preaching in the latter city was plainly quite independent 
of the other two. It is further noteworthy that this, the 
effort of a handful of unnamed men, was the true 
"leader" — the shoot that grew. Philip's work, and 
Peter's so far as we know, were side branches, which 
came to little ; this led on to a church at Antioch, and 
so to Paul's missionary work, and all that came of 
that 

The incident naturally suggests some thoughts bearing 



296 THE FIRST PREACHING [skrm. 

on the general subject of Christian work, which we now 
briefly present 

I. Notice the spontaneous impulse which these men 
obeyed 

Persecution drove the members of the Church apart, 
and, as a matter of course, wherever they went they took 
their faith with them, and, as a matter of course, spoke 
about it The coals were scattered from the hearth in 
Jerusalem by the armed heel of violence. That did not 
put the fire out, but only spread it, for wherever they 
were flung they kindled a blaze. These men had no 
special injunction " to preach the Lord Jesus." They do 
not seem to have adopted this line of action deliberately, 
or of set purpose. They believed, and therefore spoke. 
A spontaneous impulse, and nothing more, leads them 
on. They find themselves rejoicing in a great Saviour- 
Friend. They see all around them men who need Him, 
and that is enough. They obey the promptings of the 
voice within, and lay the foundations of the first Gentile 
church. 

Such a spontaneous impulse is ever the natural result 
of our own personal possession of Christ In regard to 
worldly good the instinct, except when overcome by 
higher motives, is to keep the treasure to oneself. But 
even in the natural sphere, there are possessions which to 
have is to long to impart, such as truth and knowledge. 
And in the spiritual sphere, it is emphatically the case 
that real possession is always accompanied by a longing 
fet impart The old prophet spoke a universal truth when 



xvni.] A T ANTIOCH. 297 

he said : " Thy word was as a fire shut up in my bones, 
and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay," 
If we have found Christ for ourselves, we shall un- 
doubtedly wish to speak forth our knowledge of his 
love. Convictions which are deep demand expression. 
Emotion which is strong needs utterance. If our hearts 
have any fervour of love to Christ in them, it will be as 
natural to tell it forth, as tears are to sorrow or smiles to 
happiness. True, there is a reticence in profound feeling, 
and sometimes the deepest love can only " love and be 
silent," and there is a just suspicion of loud or vehement 
protestations of Christian emotion, as of any emotion. 
But for all that, it remains true that a heart warmed 
with the love of Christ needs to express its love, and will 
give it forth, as certainly as light must radiate from its 
centre, or heat from a fire. 

Then, true kindliness of heart creates the same impulse. 
We cannot truly possess the treasure for ourselves with- 
out pity for those who have it not Surely there is no 
stranger contradiction than that Christian men and 
women can be content to keep Christ as if He were their 
special property, and have their spirits untouched into 
any likeness of his Divine pity for the multitudes who 
were as sheep having no shepherd. What kind of 
Christians must they be who think of Christ as "a 
Saviour for me," and take no care to set Him forth as " a 
Saviour for you ? " What should we think of men in a 
shipwreck who were content to get into the life-boat, and 
let everybody else drown? What should we think of 
people in a famine feasting sumptuously on their private 



298 THE FIRST PREACHING [serm. 

stores, whilst women were boiling their children for a 
meal and men fighting with dogs for garbage on the 
dunghills ? " He that withholdeth bread, the people 
shall curse him." What of him who withholds the Bread 
of Life, and all the while claims to be a follower of the 
Christ, who gave his flesh for the good of the world ? 

Further, loyalty to Christ creates the same impulse. If 
we are true to our Lord, we shall feel that we cannot but 
speak up and out for Him, and that all the more where 
His name is unloved and unhonoured. He has left His 
good fame very much in our hands, and the very same 
impulse whicfc hurries words to our lips when we hear the 
name of an absent friend calumniated should make us 
speak for Him. He is a doubtfully loyal subject who, if 
be lives among rebels, is afraid to show his colours. He 
is already a coward, and is on the way to be a traitor. 
Our Master has made us his witnesses. He has placed 
in our hands, as a sacred deposit, the honour of his name. 
He has entrusted to us, as His selectest sign of confidence, 
the carrying out of the purposes for which on earth His 
blood was shed, on which in heaven His heart is set. 
How can we be loyal to Him if we are not forced by a 
mighty constraint to respond to His great tokens of trust 
in us, and if we know nothing of that spirit which said : 
" Necessity is laid upon me ; yea, woe is unto me, if I 
preach not the gospel ! " I do not say that a man cannot 
be a Christian unless he knows and obeys this impulse. 
But, at least, we may safely say that he is a very weak 
and impeifect Christian who does not. 



xvni.] A T ANTIOCH. 299 

IX. This incident suggests the universal obligation on 
all Christians to make known Christ 

These men were not officials. In these early days the 
Church had a very loose organisation. But the fugitives 
in our narrative seem to have had among them none even 
of the humble office-bearers of primitive times. Neither 
had they any command or commission from Jerusalem. 
No one there had given them authority, or, as would 
appear, knew anything of their proceedings. Could there 
be a more striking illustration of the great truth that 
whatever varieties of function may be committed to 
various officers in the Church, the work of telling Christ's 
love to men belongs to every one who has found it for 
himself or herself? " This honour have all the saints." 

Whatever maybe our differences of opinion as to church 
order and offices, they need not interfere with our firm 
grasp of this truth. " Preaching Christ," in the sense in 
which that expression is used in the New Testament, 
implies no one special method of proclaiming the glad 
tidings. A word written in a letter to a friend, a sentence 
dropped in casual conversation, a lesson to a child on a 
mother's lap, or any other way by which, to any listeners, 
the great story of the cross is told, is as truly — often more 
truly — preaching Christ as the set discourse which has 
usurped the name. 

We profess to believe in the priesthood of all believers, 
we are ready enough to assert it in opposition to sacer- 
dotal assumptions. Are we as ready to recognise it as 
laying a very real responsibility upon us, and involving 



3oo THE FIRST PREACHING [serm. 

a very practical inference as to our own conduct? We 
all have the power, therefore we all have the duty. For 
what purpose did God give us the blessing of knowing 
Christ ourselves? Not for our own well-being alone, 
but that through us the blessing might be still farther 
diffused 

44 Heaven doth with us as men with torches do, 
Not light them for themselves." 

* God hath shined into our hearts that we might give 
to others the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
in the face of Jesus Christ" Every Christian is solemnly 
bound to fulfil this Divine intention, and to take heed 
to the imperative command, " Freely ye have received, 
freely give." 

IIL Observe, further, the simple message which they 
proclaimed. 

" Preaching the Lord Jesus," says the text— or, more 
accurately perhaps — preaching Jesus as Lord. The 
substance then of their message was just this — procla- 
mation of the person and dignity of their Master, the story 
of the human life of the Man, the story of the Divine 
sacrifice and self-bestowment by which He had bought 
the right of supreme rule over every heart; and the 
urging of His claims on all who heard of His love. And 
this, their message, was but the proclamation of their 
own personal experience. They had found Jesus for 
themselves to be lover and Lord, friend and Saviour of 
their souls, and the joy they had received they sought to 



xviii.] A T ANTIOCH. 301 

share with these Greeks, worshippers of gods and lords 
many. 

Surely anybody can deliver that message who has had 
that experience. All have not the gifts which would fit 
for public speech, but all who have tasted that the Lord 
is gracious can tell somehow how gracious He is. The 
first Christian sermon was very short, and it was very 
efficacious, for it " brought to Jesus " the whole congre- 
gation. Here it is : " He first findeth his brother Simon, 
and saith unto him, We have found the Messias." Surely 
we can all say that, if we have found Him. Surely we 
shall all long to say it, if we are glad that we have found 
Him, and if we love our brother. 

Notice, too, how simple the form as well as the sub- 
stance of the message. " They spake." It was no set 
address, no formal utterance, but familiar, natural talk 
to ones and twos, as opportunity offered. The form was 
so simple that we may say there was none. What we 
want is that Christian people should speak anyhow. 
What does the shape of the cup matter ? What does it 
matter whether it be gold or day ? The main thing is 
that it shall bear the water of life to some thirsty lip. All 
Christians have to preach, as the word is here, that is, to 
tell the good news. Their task is to cany a message — no 
refinement of words is needed for that — arguments are 
not needed. They have to tell it simply and faithfully, 
as one who only cares to repeat what he has had given to 
him. They have to tell it confidently, as having proved 
it true. They have to tell it beseechingly, as loving the 
couls to whom they bring it Surely we can all do that 



3oa THE FIRST PREACHING [serm, 

if we ourselves are living on Christ and have drunk into 
His spirit Let His mighty salvation, experienced by 
yourselves, be the substance of your message, and let the 
form of it be guided by the old words, " It shall be, when 
the Spirit of the Lord is come upon thee, that thou shalt 
do as occasion shall serve thee." 

IV. Notice, lastly, the mighty Helper who prospered 
their work. 

* The hand of the Lord was with them." The very 
keynote of this book of the Acts is the work of the as- 
cended Christ in and for his Church At every turning 
point in the history, and throughout the whole narratives, 
forms of speech like this occur bearing witness to the 
profound conviction of the writer that Christ's active 
energy was with His servants, and Christ's hand the origin 
of all their security and of all their success. 

So this is a statement of a permanent and universal fact 
We do not labour alone ; however feeble our hands, that 
mighty Hand is laid on them to direct their movements 
and to lend strength to their weakness. It is not our 
speech which will secure results, but his presence with our 
words which shall bring it about that even through them 
a great number shall believe and turn to the Lord. 
There is our encouragement when we are despondent 
There is our rebuke when we are self-confident There 
is our stimulus when we are indolent There is our quiet- 
ness when we are impatient If ever we are tempted to 
think our task heavy, let us not forget that He who set 
it helps us to do it, and from His throne shares in all our 



xvhl] A T ANTIOCH. 303 

toils, the Lord still, as of old, working with us. If ever 
we feel that our strength is nothing, and that we stand 
solitary against many foes, let us fall back upon the 
peacegiving thought that one man against the world, 
with Christ to help him, is always in the majority, and let 
us leave issues of our work in his hands, whose hand will 
guard the seed sown in weakness, whose smile will bless 
the springing thereot 

How little any of us know what shall become of our 
poor work, under His fostering care I How little these 
men knew that they were laying the foundations of the 
great change which was to transform the Christian 
community from a Jewish sect into a world-embracing 
Church 1 So is it ever. We know not what we do when 
simply and humbly we speak His name. The far- 
reaching issues escape our eyes. Then sow the seed, 
and He will "give it a body as it pleaseth Him." On 
earth we may never know the results of our labours. 
They will be among the surprises of heaven, where many 
a solitary worker shall exclaim with wonder as he looks 
on the hitherto unknown children whom God hath given 
him, "Behold, I was left alone; these, where had they 
been?" Then, though our names may have perished 
from earthly memories, like those of the simple fugitives 
of Cyprus and Cyrene, who "were the first that ever 
burst " into the night of heathendom with the torch of 
the gospel in their hands, they will be written in the 
Lamb's book of life, and He will confess them in the 
presence of His Father in heaven. 



SERMON XIX. 

THE MASTER AND HIS SLAVES. 

2 Peter ii, i. 
Denying the Lord that bought them. 

HPHERE were three great stains on the civilisation of 
A the world into which Christianity came : war, the 
position of woman, and slavery. With the two first of 
these we have nothing to do at present, but the relation 
of the New Testament to the last of these great evils 
naturally connects itself with the words before us. That 
relation is at first sight very singular. There can be no 
doubt that the atrocious system of slavery is utterly irre- 
concileable with the principles and spirit of the Gospel- 
It dies in the light of Christianity, like some foul fungus 
that can only grow in the dark. And yet there is not a 
word of condemnation of it in the book. The writers of 
the New Testament found that evil institution which 
makes the slaves chattels and their masters fiends in full 
force, and they said nothing against it Paul recognises 
it in several of his letters, regulates it, gives counsels 
to Christians standing to each other in the extraordinary 
relation of owner and slave ; sends back the runaway 



XIX.] THE MASTER AND HIS SLAVES. y>$ 

Onesimus to his master, and shows no consciousness of 
the revolutionary force of his own words, " In Christ 
Jesus there is neither bond nor free." Whether he fore- 
saw the effect of the gospel in breaking every yoke or no, 
the fact remains that Christianity at its beginning ran no 
tilt against even the most execrable social iniquities, but 
was guided by the wisdom which said, " Make the tree 
good, and its fruit good" The only way to mend in- 
stitutions is by mending individuals. Elevate the tone 
of society by lifting the moral nature of the units, and 
evil things will drop away and become impossible. Other 
ways are revolutionary and imperfect 

In like manner, this same wicked thing, slavery, is used 
as an illustration of the highest, sacredest, noblest rela- 
tionship possible to men — their submission to Jesus 
Christ With all its vileness, it is still not too vile to be 
lifted from the mud, and to stand as a picture of the purest 
ind loftiest tie that can bind the souL The apostles 
glory in calling themselves " slaves of Jesus Christ" That 
title of honour heads each epistle. And here in this 
text we have the same figure expressed with Peter's 
own energy, and carried out in detail The word in 
our text for " Lord," is an unusual one, selected to put 
the idea in the roughest, most absolute form. It is the 
root of our word "despot," and conveys, at any rate, 
the notion of unlimited, irresponsible authority. We 
might read u owner" with some approach to the force of 
the word. 

Nor is this all One of the worst and ugliest features 
of slavery is that of the market, where men and women 

ft 



3o6 THE MASTER AND HIS SLA VES. [SERM. 

and children arc sold like cattle. And that has its 
parallel too, for this Owner has bought men for His. 

Nor is this all ; for, as there are fugitive slaves, who 
"break away every man from his master," and when 
questioned will not acknowledge that they are his, so 
men flee from this Lord and Owner, and by words and 
deeds assert that they owe Him no obedience, and were 
never in bondage to Him. 

So, then, there are these three points brought out in 
the words before us : Christ's absolute ownership of men ; 
fat purchase on which it depends ; and the fugitives who 
deny his authority. 

I. The strong expression of the text asserts Christ s 
absolute ownership. If a word had been sought to convey 
the hardest possible representation of irresponsible, un- 
limited authority, bound by no law but its own will, 
the word in our text would have been chosen. Such 
authority can never be really exercised by men over men. 
For thought and will are ever free. To claim it would 
be blasphemy, to allow it would be degradation. But such 
an authority, in comparison with which the most absolute 
that man can exercise over man is slight and superficial, 
this peasant of Nazareth claims, and not in vain. Proud 
hearts have bowed to his authority, and through the 
centuries the whole being of thousands upon thousands 
has gloried in submission — utter and all-embracing — to 
Him. " What manner of man is this," it was said of old, 
" that even the winds and the sea obey Him ?" But the 
question opens a deeper depth of wonder, and a higher 



XIX.] THE MASTER AND HIS SLAVES. 307 

stretch of power: "What manner of man is this that 
even the hearts and wills of men obey Him?" His 
autocratic lips spake, and it was done, when He was 
here on earth — rebuking disease, and it fled; the wild 
storm, and there was a great calm; demons, and they 
came out ; death itself, and its dull cold ear heard, and 
Lazarus came forth. To material things and forces He 
spake as their great Imperator and Commander, saying 
to this one " Go,'* i^d he went, and showing his Divinity, 
as even the pagan centurion had learned, by the power 
of His word, the 'rare utterance of His will 

But His rule iu the region of man's spirit is as absolute 
and authoritative, a,nd there too "His word is with power." 
The correlative of Christ's ownership is our entire sub- 
mission of will, our complete acceptance of the law of 
his lips, our practical recognition that we are not our 
own. Loyola demanded from his black-robed militia 
obedience to the general of the order so complete that 
they were to be "just like a corpse," or "a staff in a 
blind man's hand." Such a requirement made by a man 
is of course the crushing of the will, and the emasculation 
of the whole nature. But such a demand yielded to from 
Christ is the vitalising of the will and the ennobling of 
the spirit To give myself up to Him is to become not 
"like a corpse" — but to be as alive from the dead. We 
then first find our lives when we surrender them to Him. 

The owner of the slave could set him to any work he 
thought fit So our Owner gives all His slaves their 
several tasks. As in some despotic eastern monarchies 
fee sultan's vrx re pleasure makes of one slave his vizier, 

x 2 



308 THE MASTER AND HIS SLAVES. [SKR1C 

and of another his slipper-bearer, our King chooses one 
man to a post of honour, and another to a lowly place ; 
and none have a right to question the allocation of wort 
What corresponds on our parts to that sovereign freedom 
of appointment? Cheerful acceptance of our task, what- 
ever it be. What does it matter whether we are set to 
do things which the vulgar world calls " great," or things 
which the blind world calls " small ? " They are equally 
set us by Him to whom all service is alike that is done 
from the same motive, and all that we need care about 
is to give glad obedience and unmurmuring honest work. 
Nobody knows what is important service, and what not 
We have to wait till another day far ahead, before we 
can tell that. All work that contributes to a great end 
is great ; as the old rhyme has it, " for the want of a nail 
a kingdom was lost." So, whatever our tasks, let us say, 
" Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? ■ 

The slave's hut, and little patch of garden ground, and 
few bits of furniture, whose were they — his or his master's ? 
If he was not his own, nothing else could be his own. 
And whose are our possessions ? If we have no property 
in ourselves, still less can we have property in our pro- 
perty. These things were His before, and are His stilL 
The first claim on them is our Master's, not ours. We 
have not the right to do what we like with our own. So, 
if we rightly understand our position, we shall feel that we 
are trustees, not possessors. When, like prodigal sons, 
we "waste our substance," we are unfaithfiil stewards, 
also, " wasting our Lord's goods." 

Such absolute submission of will, and recognition of 



xix.] THE MASTER AND HIS SLAVES. 309 

Christ* 8 absolute authority over us, our destiny, work, and 
possessions, is ennobling and blessed. So to bow before 
a man would be degrading were it possible, but so to bow 
before Him is our highest honour, and liberates us from 
all other submission. The king's servant is every other 
person's master. We learn from historians that the 
origin of nobility in some Teutonic nations is supposed 
to have been the dignities enjoyed by the king's household 
—of which you find traces still. The king's master of 
the horse, or chamberlain, or cupbearer, becomes noble. 
Christ's servants are lords, free because they serve Him, 
noble because they wear His livery and bear the mark of 
Jesus as their Lord. 

VL The text brings Into view the purchase on which 
that ownership is founded. 

This master has acquired men by right of purchase. 
That abomination of the auction-block may suggest the 
better " merchandise of the souls of men/' which Christ 
has madet when He bought us with His own blood as our 
ransom. 

That purchase is represented in two forms of expres- 
sion. Sometimes we read that He has bought us with His 
" blood j M sometimes that He has given "Himself" for 
us. Both expressions point to the same great fact — His 
death as the price at which He has acquired us as His 
own. 

There are far deeper thoughts involved in this state- 
ment than can be dealt with here, but let me note one or 
two plain points. First, then, that is a very beautiful and 



310 THE MASTER AND HIS SLA VES. [serm. 

profound one, that Christ's lordship over men is built 
upon His mighty and supreme sacrifice for men. Nothing 
short of His utter giving up of himself for them gives Him 
the right of absolute authority over them ; or, as Paul 
puts it, " He gave himself for us," that He might " pur- 
chase for himself a people." He does not found His king- 
dom on His Divinity, but on His suffering. His cross is 
His throne. It seems to me that the recognition of 
Christ's death as our ransom is absolutely essential to 
warrant the submission to Him which is the very heart of 
Christianity. I do not know why any man who rejects 
that view of the death of Christ should call to Him, 
" Lord ! Lord ! " We are justified in saying to Him, " 
Lord, truly I am thy servant," only when we can go on to 
say, " Thou hast loosed my bonds." 

Then, consider that the figure suggests that we are 
bought from a previous slavery to some other master. 
Free men are not sold into slavery, but slaves pass from 
one master to another, and sometimes are bought into 
freedom as well as into bondage. Hebrew slavery was a 
very different thing from Roman or American slavery — 
but such as it was, there was connected with it that pecu- 
liar institution of the Goel> by which, under certain cir- 
cumstances, if an Israelite had sold himself into slavery, 
he could be redeemed. As the law has it, " One of his 
kinsmen may redeem him." So our Kinsman buys us 
back from our bondage to sin and guilt and condemna- 
tion, from the slavery of our tyrant lusts, from the slavery 
to men's censures and opinions, from the dominion of 
evil and darkness, and making as His, makes us free. 



xix.] THE MASTER AND HIS SLA VES. 31 1 

He that committeth sin is the slave of sin. If the Son 
therefore make you free, ye shall be free indeed 

IIL Our text also brings to view the Runaways. We 
do not care to enquire here what special type of heretics 
the apostle had in view in these solemn words, nor to 
apply them to modern parallels which we may fancy 
we can find It is more profitable to notice how all god- 
lessness and sin may be described as denying the Lord. 
All sin, I say, for it would appear very plain that the 
people spoken of here were not Christians at all, and yet 
the apostle believes that Christ had bought them by His 
sacrifice, and so had a right over them, which their con- 
duct and their words equally denied. 

How eloquent that word " denying n is on Peter's lips. 
Did the old man travel back in memory to that cold morn- 
ing, when he was shivering beside the coal-fire in the high 
priest's palace, and a flippant serving-maid could frighten 
him into lying? Is it not touching to notice that he 
describes the very worst aspect of the sin of these people 
in the words that recall his own ? It is as if he were 
humbly acknowledging that no rebellion could be worse 
than his, and were renewing again his penitence and 
bitter weeping after all those years. 

All sin is a denial of Christ's authority. It is in effect 
saying, " We will not have this man to reign over us.* 
It is at bottom the uprising of our own self-will against 
his rule, and the proud assertion of our own indepen- 
dence. It is as foolish as it is ungrateful, as ungrateful 
as it is foolish. 



3ia THE MASTER AND HIS SLA VES. [serm. xix. 

That denial is made by deeds which are done in de* 
fiance or neglect of his authority, and it is done too by 
words and opinions. It is not for us to bring such a 
grave charge against individuals, but at least we may 
exhort our readers to beware of all forms of teaching 
which weaken Christ's absolute authority or which remove 
the very foundation of His throne by weakening the power 
and meaning of His sacrifice. 

Finally, let us beware lest the fate of many a runaway 
slave be ours, and we be lost in trackless bogs and perish 
miserably. Casting off His yoke is sure to end in ruin* 
Rather, drawn by the cords of love, and owning the 
blessed bonds in which willing souls are held by the love 
of Christ, let us take Him for our Lord, who has given 
himself for our ransom, and answer the pleading of His 
cross with our glad surrender. Then shall He say, " I 
call you not servants but friend*" 



SERMON XX. 

A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS. 

2 Timothy iv. 6-8. 

I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure Is at 
hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I 
have kept the faith : henceforth there is laid up for me a crown 
of righteousness. 

TDAUL'S long day's work is nearly done. He is a 
■*■ prisoner in Rome, all but forsaken by his friends, 
in hourly expectation of another summons before Nero. 
To appear before him was, he says, like putting his head 
into " the mouth of the lion." His horizon was darkened 
by sad anticipations of decaying faith and growing 
corruptions in the church. What a road he had travelled 
since that day when, on the way to Damascus, he saw 
the living Christ, and heard the words of his mouth I 

It had been but a failure of a life, if judged by ordinary 
standards. He had suffered the loss of all things, had 
thrown away position and prospects, had exposed him* 
self to sorrows and toils, had been all his days a poor 
man and solitary, had been hunted, despised, laughed at 
by Jew and Gentile, worried and badgered even by so- 
called brethren, loved the less, the more he loved. And 
now the end is near. A prison and the headsman's 



314 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, [serm. 

sword arc the world's wages to its best teacher. When 
Nero is on the throne, the only possible place for Paul is 
the dungeon opening on to the scaffold Better to be 
the martyr than the Caesar 1 

These familiar words of our text bring before us a very 
sweet and wonderful picture of the prisoner, so near his 
end. How beautifully they show his calm waiting for 
the last hour and the bright forms which lightened for 
him the darkness of his cell I Many since have gone to 
their rest with their hearts stayed on the same thoughts, 
though their lips could not speak them to our listening 
ears. Let us be thankful for them, and pray that for 
ourselves, when we come to that hour, the same quiet 
heroism and the same sober hope mounting to calm 
certainty may be ours. 

These words refer to the past, the present, the future. 
"I have fought — the time of my departure is come- 
henceforth there is laid up." 

I. So we notice first The quiet courage which looks 
death full in the face without a tremor. 

The language implies that Paul knows his death 
hour is all but here. As the revised version more 
accurately gives it, "I am already being offered n — 
the process is begun, his sufferings at the moment are, 
as it were, the initial steps of his sacrifice — " and the 
time of my departure is come" The tone in which he 
tells Timothy this is very noticeable. There is no sign 
of excitement, no tremor of emotion, no affectation of 
stoicism in the simple sentences. He is not playing up 



XX.] A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS. 315 

to a part, nor pretending to be anything which he is not 
If ever language sounded perfectly simple and genuine, 
this does. 

And the occasion of the whole section is as remark* 
able as the tone. He is led to speak about himself at 
all, only in order to enforce his exhortation to Timothy 
to put his shoulder to the wheel, and do his work for 
Christ with all his might All he wishes to say is simply, 
Do your work with all your might, for I am going off the 
field. But having begun on that line of thought, he is 
carried on to say more than was needed for his 
immediate purpose, and thus inartificially to let us sec 
what was filling his mind 

And the subject into which he subsides after these 
lofty thoughts is as remarkable as either tone or occasion. 
Minute directions about such small matters as books and 
parchments, and perhaps a warm cloak for winter, and 
homely details about the movements of the little group 
of his friends immediately follow. All this shows with 
what a perfectly unforced courage Paul fronted his fate, 
and looked death in the eyes. The anticipation did not 
dull his interest in God's work in the world, as witness 
the warnings and exhortations of the context. It did not 
withdraw his sympathies from his companions. It did 
not hinder him from pursuing his studies and pursuits, nor 
from providing for small matters of daily convenience. 
If ever a man was free from any taint of fanaticism or 
morbid enthusiasm, it was this man waiting so calmly in 
his prison for his death. 

There is great beauty and force in the expressions 



316 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS. [SBRM. 

which he uses for death here. He will not soil his lips 
with its ugly name, but calls it an offering and a departure. 
There is a wide-spread unwillingness to say the word 
" Death." It falls on men's hearts like clods on a coffin 
— so all people and languages have adopted euphemisms 
for it, fair names which wrap silk round his dart and 
somewhat hide his face. But there are two opposite 
reasons for their use — terror and confidence. Some men 
dare not speak of death because they dread it so much, 
and try to put some kind of shield between themselves 
and the very thought of it by calling it something less 
dreadful to them than itsel£ Some men, on the other 
hand, are familiar with the thought, and though it is 
solemn, it is not altogether repellent to them. Gazing on 
death with the thoughts and feelings which Jesus Christ 
has given them concerning it, they see it in new aspects, 
which take away much of its blackness. And so they do 
not feel inclined to use the ugly old name, but had rather 
call it by some which reflect the gentler aspect that it 
now wears to them. So " sleep," and " rest " and the like 
are the names which have almost driven the other out of 
the New Testament — witness of the fact that in inmost 
reality Jesus Christ " has abolished death," however the 
physical portion of it may still remain master of our bodies. 
But looking for a moment at the specific metaphors 
used here, we have first, that of an offering, or more 
particularly of a drink offering, or libation, " I am already 
being poured out" No doubt the special reason for the 
selection of this figure here is Paul's anticipation of a 
violent death. The shedding of his blood was to be an 



XX.] A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS. 317 

offering poured out like some costly wine upon the altar, 
but the power of the figure reaches far beyond that 
special application of it We may all make our deaths a 
sacrifice, an offering to God, for we may yield up our 
will to God's will, and so turn that last struggle into an 
act of worship and self surrender. When we recognize 
His hand, when we submit our wills to His purposes, 
when u we live unto the Lord," if we live, and " die unto 
Him,* if we die, then Death will lose all its terror and 
most of its pain, and will become for us what it was to 
Paul, a true offering up of self in thankful worship. Nay 
we may even say, that so we shall in a certain 
subordinate sense be " made conformable unto his death " 
who committed His spirit into His Father's hands, and 
laid down His life, of His own will. The essential 
character and far-reaching effects of this sacrifice we 
cannot imitate, but we can so yield up our wills to God 
and leave life so willingly and trustfully as that death 
shall make our sacrifice complete. 

Another more familiar and equally striking figure is 
next used, when Paul speaks of the time of his " depar- 
ture/ 1 The thought is found in most tongues. Death 
is a going away, or, as Peter calls it (with a glance, 
possibly, at the special meaning of the word in the Old 
Testament, as well as its use in the solemn statement 
of the theme of converse on the Mountain of Transfigu- 
ration), an Exodus. But the well-worn image receives 
new depth and sharpness of outline in Christianity. To 
those who have learned the meaning of Christ's resurrec- 
tion, and feed their souls on the hopes that it warranto, 



318 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, [serm 

Death is merely a change of place or state, an accident 
affecting locality, and little more. We have had plenty 
of changes before. Life has been one long series of 
departures. This is different from the others mainly in 
that it is the last, and that to go away from this visible and 
fleeting show, where we wander aliens among things which 
have no true kindred with us, is to go home, where there 
will be no more pulling up the tent-pegs, and toiling 
across the deserts in monotonous change. How strong 
is the conviction, spoken in that name for death, that the 
essential life lasts on quite unaltered through it all ! How 
slight the else formidable thing is made. We may 
change climates, and for the stormy bleakness of life 
may have the long still days of heaven, but we do not 
change ourselves. We lose nothing worth keeping when 
we leave behind the body, as a dress not fitted for home, 
where we are going. We but travel one more stage, 
though it be the last, and part of it be in pitchy darkness. 
Some pass over it as in a fiery chariot, like Paul and 
many a martyr. Some have to toil through it with 
slow steps and bleeding feet and fainting heart ; but all 
may have a Brother with them, and holding His hand 
may find that the journey is not so hard as they feared, 
and the home from which they shall remove no more, 
better than they hoped when they hoped the most 

II. We have here too, the peaceful look backwards. 

There is something very noteworthy in the threefold 
aspect under which his past life presents itself to the 
apostle, who is so soon to leave it He thinks of it as a 



xx.] A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS. 319 

contest, as a race, as a stewardship. The first suggests 
the tension of a long struggle with opposing wrestlers 
who have tried to throw him, but in vain. The world, 
both of men and things, has had to be grappled with and 
mastered His own sinful nature and especially his 
animal nature has had to be kept under by sheer force, 
and every moment has been resistance to subtle omni- 
present forces that have sought to thwart his aspirations 
and hamper his performances. His successes have had 
to be fought for, and everything that he has done has 
been done after a struggle. So is it with all noble life ; 
so will it be to the end. 

He thinks of life as a race. That speaks of continuous 
advance in one direction, and more emphatically still, 
of effort that sets the lungs panting and strains every 
muscle to the utmost He thinks of it as a stewardship. 
He has kept the faith (whether by that word we are to 
understand the body of truth believed or the act of 
believing) as a sacred deposit committed to him, of which 
he has been a good steward, and which he is now ready 
to return to his Lord. There is much in these 
letters to Timothy about keeping treasures entrusted to 
one's care. Timothy is bid to "keep that good thing 
which is committed to thee," as Paul here declares 
that he has done. Nor is such guarding of a precious 
deposit confined to us stewards on earth, but the apostle 
is sure that his loving Lord, to whom he has entrusted 
himself, will with like tenderness and carefulness " keep 
that which he has committed unto Him against that day.* 
The confidence in that faithful Keeper made it possible 



320 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, [sbrm. 

for Paul to be faithful to his trust, and as a steward who 
was bound by all ties to his Lord, to guard His pos- 
sessions and administer His affairs. Life was full of 
voices urging him to give up the faith. Bribes and 
threats, and his own sense-bound nature, and the 
constant whispers of the world had tempted him all along 
the road to fling it away as a worthless thing, but he had 
kept it safe ; and now, nearing the end and the account, 
he can put his hand on the secret place near his heart 
where it lies, and feel that it is there, ready to be 
restored to his Lord, with the thankful confession, " Thy 
pound hath gained ten pounds." 

So life looks to this man in his retrospect as mainly a 
field for struggle, effort and fidelity. This world is not 
to be for us an enchanted garden of delights, any more 
than it should appear a dreary desert of disappointment 
and woe. But it should be to us mainly a palaestra, or 
gymnasium and exercising ground. You cannot expect 
many flowers or much grass in the place where men 
wrestle and run. We need not much mind though it be 
bare, if we can only stand firm on the hard earth, nor 
lament that there are so few delights to stay our eyes 
from the goal. We are here for serious work ; let us not 
be too eager for pleasures that may hinder our efforts 
and weaken our vigour, but be content to lap up a hasty 
draught from the brooks by the way, and then on again 
to the fight 

Such a view of life makes it radiant and fair while it 
lasts, and makes the heart calm when the hour comes to 
leave it all behind. So thinking of the past, there may 



xx.1 A PRISONER 'S D YING THO UGHTS. 321 

be a sense of not unwelcome lightening from a load of re- 
sponsibility when we have got all the stress and strain of 
the conflict behind us, and have at any rate not been 
altogether beaten. We may feel like a captain who has 
brought his ship safe across the Atlantic, through foul 
weather and past many an iceberg, and gives a great 
sigh of relief as he hands over the charge to the pilot, 
who will take her across the harbour bar and bring her 
to her anchorage in the landlocked bay where no tem- 
pests rave any more for ever. 

Prosaic theologians have sometimes wondered at the 
estimate which Paul here makes of his past services and 
faithfulness, but the wonder is surely unnecessary. It is 
very striking to notice the difference between his judg- 
ment of himself while he was still in the thick of the 
conflict, and now when he is nearing the end. Then, 
one main hope which animated all his toils and nerved 
him for the sacrifice of life itself was " that I might finish 
my course with joy." Now, in the quiet of his dungeon, 
that hope is fulfilled, and triumphant thoughts, like 
shining angels, keep him company in his solitude. Then 
he struggles, and wrestles, touched by the haunting fear 
lest after that he has preached to others he himself should 
be rejected. Now the dread has passed, and a meek 
hope stands by his side. 

What is this change of feeling but an instance of what, 
thank God, we so often see, that at the end the heart 
which has been bowed with fears and self-depreciation is 
filled with peace ? They who tremble most during the 
conflict are most likely to look back with solid satisfac- 

f 



322 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS. [SERM. 

tion, while they who never knew a fear all along the 
course will often have them surging in upon their souls 
too late, and will see the past in a new lurid light, when 
they are powerless to change it Blessed is the man 
who thus feareth always. At the end he will have hope. 
The past struggles are joyful in memory, as the mountain 
ranges, which were all black rock and white snow while 
we toiled up their inhospitable steeps, lie purple in the 
mellowing distance, and burn like fire as the sunset 
strikes their peaks. Many a wild winter's day has a fair 
cloudless close, and lingering opal hues diffused through 
all the quiet sky. " At eventide it shall be light" 
Though we go all our lives mourning and timid, there 
may yet be granted us ere the end some vision of the 
true significance of these lives, and some humble hope 
that they have not been wholly in vain. 

Such an estimate has nothing in common with self- 
complacency. It coexists with a profound consciousness 
of many a sin, many a defeat, and much unfaithfulness. 
It belongs only to a man who, conscious of these, is 
11 looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ unto 
eternal life," and is the direct result, not the antagonist, 
of lowly self-abasement, and contrite faith in Him by 
whom alone our stained selves and poor broken services 
can ever be acceptable. Let us learn too that the only 
life that bears being looked back upon is a life of Christian 
devotion and effort It shows fairer when seen in the 
strange cross lights that come when we stand on the 
boundary of two worlds, with the white radiance of 
eternity beginning to master the vulgar oil lamps of 



XX.] A PRISONER'S D YING THOUGHTS. 323 

earth, than when seen by these alone. All others have 
their shabbiness and their selfishness disclosed then. 
I remember once seeing a mob of revellers streaming out 
from a masked ball in a London theatre in the early 
morning sunlight ; draggled and heavy-eyed, the rouge 
showing on the cheeks, and the shabby tawdriness of the 
foolish costumes pitilessly revealed by the pure light. 
So will many a life look when the day dawns, and the 
wild riot ends in its unwelcome beams. 

The one question for us all, then, will be, Have I lived 
for Christ, and by Him ? Let it be the one question for 
us now, and let it be answered, Yes. Then we shall have 
at the last a calm confidence, equally far removed from 
presumption and from dread, which will let us look back 
on life, though it be full of failures and sins, with peace, 
and forward with humble hope of the reward which we 
shall receive from His mercy. 

III. The climax of all is the triumphant look forward. 
" Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteous- 
ness." In harmony with the images of the conflict and the 
race, the crown here is not the emblem of sovereignity, 
but of victory, as indeed is almost without exception the 
case in the New Testament The idea of the royal 
dignity of Christians in the future is set forth rather 
under the emblem of association with Christ on his throne, 
while the wreath on their brows is the coronal of laurel, 
" meed of mighty conquerors," or the twine of leaves 
given to him who, panting, touched the goaL The 
reward then which is meant by the emblem, whatever be 



324 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, [serm. 

its essence, comes through effort and conflict " A man 
is not crowned, except he strive." 

That crown, according to other words of Scripture, 
consists of " life," or " glory w — that is to say, the issue and 
outcome of believing service and faithftd stewardship here 
is the possession of the true life, which stands in union 
with God, in measure so great, and in quality so wonderous 
that it lies on the pure locks of the victors like a flashing 
diadem, all ablaze with light in a hundred jewels. The 
completion and exaltation of our nature and characters by 
the illapse of " life " so sovereign and transcendant that it 
is u glory w is the consequence of all Christian effort here 
in the lower levels, where the natural life is always weak- 
ness and sometimes shame, and the spiritual life is at the 
best but a hidden glory and a struggling spark. There 
is no profit in seeking to gaze into that light of glory so 
as to discern the shapes of those who walk in it, or the 
elements of its lambent flames. Enough that in its 
gracious beauty transfigured souls move as in their 
native atmosphere ! Enough that even our dim vision 
can see that they have for their companion " One like 
unto the Son of Man." It is Christ's own life which 
they share ; it is Christ's own glory which irradiates them. 
That crown is "a crown of righteousness " in 
another sense from that in which it is " a crown of life." 
The latter expression indicates the material, if we may 
say so, of which it is woven, but the former rather points 
to the character to which it belongs or is given. 
Righteousness alone can receive that reward. It is not 
the struggle or the conflict which wins it, but the 



XX.] A PRISONER'S D YING THOUGHTS. 32S 

character evolved in the struggle, not the works of 
strenuous service, but the moral nature expressed in 
these. There is such a congruity between righteousness 
and the crown of life, that it can be laid on none other 
head but that of a righteous man, and if it could, all its 
amaranthine flowers would shrivel and fall when they 
touched an impure brow. It is, then, the crown of 
righteousness, as belonging by its very nature to such 
characters alone. 

But whatever is the essential congruity between the 
character and the crown, we have to remember too that, 
according to this apostle's constant teaching, the 
righteousness which clothes us in fair raiment, and has 
a natural right to the wreath of victory, is a gift, as 
truly as the crown itself, and is given to us all on 
condition of our simple trust in Jesus Christ If we are 
to be " found of Him in peace, without spot and 
blameless," we must be " found in Him, not having our 
own righteousness, but that which is ours through faith 
in Christ" Toil and conflict, and anxious desire to be 
true to our responsibilities, will do much for a man, but 
they will not bring him that righteousness which brings 
down on the head the crown of life. We must trust to 
Christ to give us the righteousness in which we are 
justified, and to give us the righteousness by the working 
out of which in our life and character we are fitted for 
that great reward. He crowns our works and selves 
with exuberant and unmerited honours, but what he 
crowns is His own gift to us, and His great love must 
bestow both the righteousness and "the crown." 



326 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, [serm. 

The crown is given at a time called by Paul " at that 
day," which is not the near day of his martyrdom, but 
that of His Lord's appearing. He does not speak of the 
fulness of the reward as being ready for him at death, 
but as being "henceforth laid up for him in heaven, ■ 
So he looks forward beyond the grave. The immediate 
future after death was to his view a period of blessedness 
indeed, but not yet fulL The state of the dead in Christ 
was a state of consciousness, a state of rest, a state of 
felicity, but also a state of expectation. To the full 
height of their present capacity they who sleep in Jesus 
are blessed, being still in his embrace, and their spirits 
pillowed on his heart, nor so sleeping that, like drowsy 
infants, they know not where they lie so safe, but only 
sleeping in so much as they rest from weariness, and 
have closed their eyes to the ceaseless turmoil of this 
fleeting world, and are lapped about for ever with the 
sweet, unbroken consciousness that they are "present 
with the Lord." What perfect repose, perfect fruition of 
all desires, perfect union with the perfect End and Object 
of all their being, perfect exemption from all sorrow, 
tumult and sin can bring of blessedness, that they possess 
in over measure unfailingly. And, in addition, they still 
know the joy of hope, and have carried that jewel with 
them into another world, for they wait for "the redemp- 
tion of the body," in the reception of which, "at that day," 
their life will be filled up to a yet fuller measure, and 
gleam with a more lustrous " glory." Now they rest and 
wait Then shall they be crowned 

Nor must self-absorbed thoughts be allowed to bound 



XX.] A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS. 327 

our anticipations of that future. It is no solitary blessed- 
ness to which Paul looked forward. Alone in his dun- 
geon, alone before his judge when " no man stood by * 
him, soon to be alone in his martyrdom, he leaps up in 
spirit at the thought of the mighty crowd among whom 
he will stand in that day, on every head a crown, in every 
heart the same love to the Lord whose life is in them all 
and makes them all one. So we may cherish the hope 
of a social heaven. Man's course begins in a garden, 
but it ends in a city. The final condition will be the 
perfection of human society. There all who love Christ 
will be drawn together, and old ties, broken for a little 
while here, be reknit in yet holier form, never to be 
parted more. 

Ah, friends, the all-important question for each of us 
is how may we have such a hope, like a great sunset 
light shining into the western windows of our souls? 
There is but one answer — Trust Christ. That is enough. 
Nothing else is. Is your life built on Jesus Christ ? Are 
you trusting your salvation to Him? Are you giving 
Him your love and service ? Does your life bear looking 
at to-day? Will it bear looking at in death? Will it 
bear His looking at in Judgment ? 

If you ean humbly say, To me to live is Christ, then 
is it well. Living by Him we may fight and conquer, 
may win and obtain. Living by Him, we may be ready 
quietly to lie down when the time comes, and may have 
all the future filled with the blaze of a great hope that 
glows brighter as the darkness thickens. That peaceful 
hope will not leave us till consciousness fails, and then 



328 A PRISONER'S DYING THOUGHTS, [serm. xx. 

when it has ceased to guide us Christ himself will lead 
us, scarcely knowing where we are, through the waters, 
and when we open our half-bewildered eyes in brief 
wonder, the first thing we see will be his welcoming smile, 
and his voice will say, as a tender surgeon might to a 
little child waking after an operation, " It is all over." 
We lift our hands wondering and find wreaths on our 
poor brows. We lift our eyes, and lo ! all about us a 
trowned crowd of conquerors, 

u And with the morn those angel faces smile 
Which we have loved long since, and lost awhile.' 9 



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